


I Get to Kiss You, Baby

by minglingcrab



Series: I Get To Kiss You, Baby [1]
Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Angst, Ensemble - Freeform, Future Fic, M/M, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-05
Updated: 2010-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-05 19:51:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minglingcrab/pseuds/minglingcrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam POV, Idol tour and post-tour.  Love isn't selfish, but pining sort of is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Get to Kiss You, Baby

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by preromantics

Oddly enough, it isn't the fan fiction that makes things weird.

And maybe that in itself is a sign that Adam has some serious cognitive dissonance or repression going on. Because he knows how he feels about Kris— fucking _America _knows how he feels about Kris—so God, Adam's good, if he can actually skim soft-core porn of the two of them and be all amused and detached about it.

Maybe he has less of a crush than he'd thought.

Except that what's on his computer screen right now isn't fictional, and it has Adam thrumming like a plucked guitar string, which isn't nearly as much fun as it sounds.  He's buzzing under his skin.  He can actually feel his heart pounding against his ribs, it _hurts_, it's fucking scary, he's a little breathless, and if it wasn't the fan fiction that did it, well, it fucking should have been, so that's where he's going to start, even if it's more than irrational to give Neil shit over this.

It's pretty pathetic, is what it is, especially considering that he can't bitch Neil out properly unless he means it, so instead of doing some cathartic yelling he's probably going to break and start crying for advice in five minutes or less.

"What the fuck did you send me?" he demands when Neil picks up.  He feels like shit.   He'd intended to use this afternoon to get in some phone time with Drake.  He'd told _Rolling Stone _that Drake is _dreamy_, and it's exactly the right word—sweet, and wild and funny in a charming-little-boy way that Adam doesn't think is going to get old any time soon.

He'd been happy with the slow build between them, and even with no build at all once tour got started.  It was nice to just be with someone, with no expectations or demands.

It freaks him the fuck out that ten minutes ago he'd been thinking of blowing off that phone call.

Neil laughs.  "You liked it, huh?"

“What, an alternate universe where Kris is totally gay for me?  What’s not to like?”  Adam picks compulsively at his nail polish.  He says, "The story itself was kind of interesting.  I mean, it was exactly what you said.  But I was telling Drake about it, and he wanted to see it – ”

“Oh,” Neil says cheerfully, “yeah, Drake is a little bitch in it.”

“Yes, he is.”  Adam doesn’t add that this detail is as realistically rendered as the rest of it.  Like, if Drake were to _become _a bitch, as, like, a plot device, the story properly captures how that would go.  Adam says quickly, “I didn’t want him to see that.  So I was hunting around for something else I could pretend was it – ”

Neil laughs uproariously.  “You should have asked me.”

“You have no idea.”  He definitely should have.  “I found this one fan…she had this collection of, like, videos and pictures of Kris and me.  It must have been every single second we’ve been on screen together.  With, like, analysis.”

“Oh, god.”  Neil is chuckling, and Adam says, a little desperately,

“So, we look like a couple.  I knew that people thought that, but I'd never actually seen—"

“Yeah,” Neil agrees, “you’ve always looked like a couple.”

“Yeah, well.”  Adam’s not entirely sure what he wants to say here.  “Is Drake a saint for not giving me shit over that?”

“Drake?”  Neil is still amused.  “What about Katy?”

“Kris is straight,” Adam says dismissively.  “But for me – ”

“Is he?  Because I’ve been meaning to ask him about that.  _I'm _straight.  Kris is…I’d say a two, in Kinsean terms, you know?  With the right guy—”  
_  
Fuck_ no.  No thoughts of Kris with guys.  That's a rule that he's never consciously acknowledged, but it's obviously a good and necessary one, because for two seconds after Neil breaks it Adam is tasting the salt at the corner of Kris' mouth; it's after "Hey Jude," and Kris is hopping with performance adrenaline and is lightly coated with sweat all over, and he grins at Adam, and Adam reaches out and—

snaps out of it hard.  He didn’t even knowhe _had_ a fantasy like that.  He doesn’t fucking _want _a fantasy like that.  “What the _fuck_ are you trying to do?”

“Whoa,” Neil says.

“I’m serious, Neil—”

"Yeah, I'm getting that."  Neil sounds puzzled.  "I didn't realize you—I figured you guys must have talked about this."

Of course they have.  More than once.  They’ve also _not _talked about it, or certain aspects of it, because they are special snowflakes who can, if necessary, communicate without words so as to avoid awkward conversations.

It’s just that they have chemistry.  Well, that, and also they’re sort of crazy about each other, but in that “I love you, man,” ass-slapping way to which friends are entitled, minus the ass-slapping, so that’s okay.  And the chemistry is okay, too— they don’t need to define it or feel weird about it, and they can, in fact, joke about it.  Just the other day, when Kris got all those dirty NASDAQ tweets, he'd said, _I didn't know they were still making jokes like...you know_, and Adam said, _We’re half a love story and half a political statement,  _and Kris said, _It's exactly half and half? Really?_

And it’s not like anything has actually changed in a way that would indicate that they need to have a refresher talk.  Except that it had seemed a lot less tawdry immediately after the finale—all the questions about their relationship.  Not that Adam minds 'tawdry,' usually, and most of those NASDAQ tweets were fucking hilarious, but the thing is that he and Kris do cross a lot of lines, and he knows that but he's never really been confronted with it with visual aids before.

"You're freaking out," Neil notes.  "Wow.  Maybe you should stop that."

Adam can't hold back a slightly hysterical laugh.  "Just like that?"

Neil mutters an obscenity.  "Fine, send me the link."

"I already did."

"Of course you did."  Neil takes a minute, and then he says, "You realize that it's mostly _him _touching _you_?"

“What?”  Adam scrolls through again.  It’s true; maybe seventy percent of the time, it’s Kris sliding down the couches to put an arm around his shoulders. It's Kris rubbing his back.  Adam feels as if all of the air has been let out of him unexpectedly.

"That's okay with you, right?  He isn't chasing you or anything, he’s just handsy.  I think I really do have to ask him how straight he is, though—"

“Manners,” Adam tells Neil—a little stiffly, but he's too relieved to put much into it—“are not your strong suit.”

“No, but I’m funny, which is better.  And hey,” he adds brightly, “if the story itself was really okay with you, I’m definitely sending you this zombie one.  You get to be a total badass.  Plus it’ll make you cry.”

“What–”

“Adam, if you’re okay, I’m hanging up.  I’m on the subway.  I hate people who talk on the subway.”  He’s gone before Adam can even begin to register a response to...zombies.  Actually, that explains a few things.

He goes to look at the pictures again.  They touch a lot; they smile a lot.

He loves Kris.  But he already knew that.

He doesn't love Drake, and that's normal.  Things are fine with Drake—fun, flirty, stimulating, interesting, and _new_.  He didn't love Kris in Hollywood, either, for Christ's sake.  Not that he didn't _like_ him.  It can take Kris a while to warm up to people, but thank fuck he didn't put Adam through that.

Oh, God, it still kills him—the _look_ on Kris' face when Tatiana started doing her shit on that stage in Hollywood week, when random chance had placed Kris and Adam, strangers, side by side in the audience, awaiting their own turns.  And then the smirk Kris shot at Adam for laughing at him, the jerk of his chin towards the stage, the deceptively mild,

“So, she's definitely going through to next round, isn't she.”

The way his accent turned _definitely _into _difinitely_.

Fuck.  Maybe he _is_ too cute.   But the fact is that _everyone _has a crush on Kris, and Adam is the only one who gets any shit over it.  Whatever.  Adam is seeing someone, and it’s going well, and Kris is his friend, the end.  It even rhymes.  He kind of wants to paint himself in glitter, go out, and do something slutty right in the middle of the afternoon, but he calls the boy he's dating instead, because if he doesn't do it soon he's not sure when his next chance will be.

“Hey, babe.”  Drake sounds well-rested and cheerful and what a mindfuck that is.  Adam shakes his shoulders a little, trying to relieve the tension.

“Hi.”  He doesn't really have very much time to talk.  Especially since they have to ease into conversation, sometimes; they really do not see each other often enough.  But Drake has an appropriate topic prepared.

“Oh, hey, I read that fan fiction thing!” he laughs.  “Oh my god, that shit is awesome.”

“Oh, you got that?” Adam lets the air in his lungs out in a laugh.  He’d found something to send, in the end.

“That part about the blow job on the bus?  I took notes.”

Adam laughs for real.  “Considering my fan base, it was probably written by a straight chick.”

“Yeah, well, she did her research.”

“She was also a virgin.”

“You know what I don't get, though?”  Drake doesn't seem too troubled by the virgin possibility.  “I'm barely in it at all.  I could have made things so much more dramatic.”

"It was from Kris' point of view,” Adam points out.  “You guys don't realistically see that much of each other.”

There's a longish pause and Adam realizes that maybe he sounds like he's thought about this a bit too much, especially when Drake says, with an inflection that can only be described as, _bitch, please_, "Realistically?”

“Sorry, I'm tired.  Hold on a sec,” he adds when his phone buzzes with an incoming text, and then two more arrive, one on top of the other, all from Kris' phone:  
_  
Wakeup call!  Half an hour til we leave_

I woulda woken U Up earlier to fix ur face but Kris said to let you sleep he does not understand how we WERKKKK to be butiful  
_  
Alli just stole my phone, not sure I want to know what she just sent you._

“It looks like I have to get going,” Adam says.

“Yeah?  Already?”

Adam hesitates.  “I meant to call you earlier,” he says, “but I got caught up on the phone with Neil.  I'm sorry.”

Pause.  “Call me when you can, hon.”

“Of course.”  Swallowing is suddenly difficult.  He's on tour and it's crazy and it makes sense for _him _not to start something that he can't finish right now, but Drake wants to be someone that the fans have to work around in fan fiction.  Which is...weird.

“Hey, it's okay,” Drake says.  “I'm glad you checked in.  You're a fucking rock star, now go blow their fucking minds.”

“Okay,” Adam agrees, smiling.

"And don't miss me too fucking much, enjoy the fucking tour.”

“You say fuck a lot, you know.”

“I always fucking say fuck a fucking lot.”

“Okay.”  Adam is laughing again, but he checks his watch.  “I really do have to go.”

“I know, I know.  Bye, cher.”  Drake hangs up before Adam can stretch things out awkwardly, and before he can feel bad about feeling awkward his phone buzzes again and it's Kris apologizing in case he really would have preferred more time to fix his face.

He rolls off the bed and looks out the window.  It's a nice day and he has a show to put on.  Minds to blow.

He goes to the bathroom to fix his face.

-

Kris messes up an interview that afternoon.

Adam has watched Kris interview in the past, once or twice, but he's given that up because it’s boring, and also because he _cannot_ handle it.  He and Kris' publicist (a too-thin, eerily calm blond named Jill who was assigned by 19E back when they made the top ten) have both delivered sternly-worded lectures on the importance of self-promotion.  They've been absolutely eloquent, both of them, and yet Kris continues to laugh, “I'm sorry! I try!  But it's easier to talk about other people!”

Not that he _never_ talks about himself, but really, there's a place for self deprecation, and album promotion is not it.

Adam doesn't get along with Jill.  He's gotten on her case more than once for not coaching Kris enough.  She doesn't particularly appreciate his input.

Adam has received plenty of compliments on his own media savvy, his articulateness and wit even on the fly, but the fact is that he really likes to talk a lot.  He has so many ideas and he likes to talk through them, he likes to express himself.  Also, he's fucking witty and articulate.

Kris has a more intuitive intelligence.  He doesn't have ideas waiting to come out as sound bites; he has good instincts and just _does_ things.  And sounds adorably awkward trying to put them into words, until he gets a few pat phrases down and then just sets them on repeat, since all the interviews ask the same questions anyway.  At least he's funny and pretty.  That's been his saving grace; all he has to do is talk, be himself, and everyone loves him.  He's inexperienced, genuine, and charming, and for some reason it doesn't occur to any of his PR people that there are times that might bite him in the ass.

Adam is alone on the bus, grabbing a few minutes of quiet time, when Kris stumbles up the stairs looking more than a little shell-shocked.

“What happened?” Adam asks, forgetting to be self-conscious.  Kris blinks at him and seems to come back to himself.

“I got into a fight with Katy before my interview.  On the phone.”  He shakes his head.  “And from the questions she was asking, I'm _pretty _sure the interviewer heard it.”

Crap, Adam thinks.

“Crap,” he says out loud.

“Yeah, pretty much.”  Kris grimaces.  “I know I should have just 'no-commented.'  She couldn't have made a story out of half a conversation.”

That does not sound good.  “What the hell did you say?” Adam asks, but Kris is suddenly looking stricken.

“I think I got Jill fired.”  He's horrified, as if that wouldn't be a_ good_ thing, and then he says, “I need my own publicist, right?  Should I...hire her?  Like... independently?”

It probably isn't the time to state his opinion of Jill's capabilities.  “No.  You need someone who'll go bulldog on your stupid ass.”

“Yeah.”  Kris scuffs one foot against the other, guilty and small, and before he knows what he's doing Adam is reaching out to him, saying,

“Oh, come here,” and pulling him in close.  Kris holds on tightly, arms all the way around; Adam leans his face down into Kris' neck and closes his eyes.  It's been a while since they've done this, he realizes; a lot of the pictures were old, in that fan’s collection.  On the show there was always some reason to grab each other – relief or congratulations or the adrenaline after a performance – but tour is more about kicking back on the bus and not talking to anybody while you try to unwind.  Kris presses his face into that space on the side of Adam's chest, just under his arm; Adam holds on and lets all the tension he didn’t know he was feeling drain away.

“Thanks,” Kris mumbles.  “It really wasn't so bad, just...I don't know.”

“What did you _say_?”

“Um.”  He bites his lip rather fetchingly; and Adam is used to noticing that kind of thing on a purely aesthetic level, because he has eyes and good taste, but now he’s all weird and noticing himself noticing.  Kris says, “I'm not even really sure.  Um.  That my private life is private.  Maybe...something about how happy couples still have disagreements, and —”

“You gave her a lecture on relationships?” Adam can't quite keep the amusement out of his voice, and a small smile actually quirks Kris' lips—lips again, damn— but he looks down and folds his arms.

“Look, no one really believes tabloid gossip,” Adam tells him.  “Only complete morons think that they're getting the whole story.”

Kris still looks mortified.  He's probably thinking about Jill.  He'd better not actually go and hire her.  Adam leans down and squeezes his arm.

“Everything _is_ okay with Katy, right?” he asks, and he's really just trying to distract Kris from the Jill thing, but when Kris merely shrugs Adam isn't sure what that means.  Kris sees his face and smiles, shaking his head.

“We did have a fight, but I don't need to give you a lecture on relationships, right?”

“I probably need one, but no.”  He's leaning in for another quick hug before his brain has time to wonder why they ever did this so much – or why they stopped.  A quick squeeze, just that little bit of closeness, and then they sit on the couch; Kris leans on Adam's side and slips headphones in his ears, and Adam just sits there enjoying the feeling.

Maybe it _should_ be weird.  Maybe he shouldn't smile just because he looks down and sees Kris' foot bouncing to whatever music he's listening to, toes barely skimming the ground.

But.  Well.  It's _Kris_.

-

Adam is thinking of getting some elephant tranquilizer for meet-and-greets and autograph signings.  Just a little tranq gun that he can keep in his pocket.  Or in a holster.  He could make a holster work. 

Just to feel secure.  Because the fans, though they are often many wonderful things, can also be— 

Well.

They're whack.   

That's how Kris put it once, eyebrows raised in half-freaked-out-ness, half hilarity, and that's the image that goes along with the word _fans _now, in Adam's mind.

The fans are most definitely whack. 

He isn't actually complaining, of course, because regularly molesting entire stadium audiences makes up for a lot.  He doesn't think he'll ever get tired of the music and the energy and how _sexy_ it all is.  It's like he's getting to shoot a not-crappy remake of _Coyote Ugly_, which he's always wished someone would do—because conceptually, the idea of liberating and empowering yourself through music and table dancing is obviously genius.  And he has a fucking stage on which to throw that down, minus the bar tending and the tables, almost every night for three months.  So.

Anyway, he knows that not all the fans are whack.  Even just statistically, these arenas hold a _lot _of people.  Most of them are just fans, people who love music or concerts or both.

It just sucks that he mostly gets to meet people like this bitch. 

These are the kind of fans who make sure that they _get_ met, after all.  She's been following him along the barricades as he signs, videoing him, talking to him when there's a pause in his interactions with the million other people he has to get to, and he doesn't know how she hasn't been trampled by the crowd yet.  She's tiny, big hair but she's kind of scrawny and…pointy, all sharp angles. 

He doesn't mind that she's obsessive.  Everyone needs a hobby.  He can be hers.  That's cool. 

He minds very much that she's a dumb bitch. 

"I almost didn't come, because oh my god, this is _so _not my scene, you have no idea."  She laughs, loudly, and he smiles at the little preteen girl in front of him and says, to her and her mother, 

"I'm glad you enjoyed the show!" 

The bitch waits considerately for the people he was actually addressing to react – they give him nods and wide smiles – before going on with whatever private conversation she's having with him in her mind. 

"You're so sweet," she says with another little laugh, like a whinny.  "I can't believe I sat through an _American Idol _concert, though, even for you, but you really are." 

"Thank you," he says to the two teenagers he's moved on to, because they're saying something gushing.  A freak benefit of the insanity out here – if he doesn't want to talk to the bitch, it's a pretty convincing cover to act like he can't hear her. 

He scribbles his signature again and again, smiles into the blurred row of faces, moving further and further down the line, and she keeps _talking_, dear _mother_ of porn and all that is holy.  She has the kind of voice that cuts through any babble.  Of course she does. 

"Some of them were _okay_ but I really can't wait until you're on your solo tour.  I mean, you have to live with them, obviously you aren't going to say anything bad, so I won't ask you what _you _think, but…" She giggles and his balls retract. 

"You have such _obvious_ star quality.  You have to know that it's true.  You're the most amazing performer I've ever seen, honestly.  I guess Arkansas couldn't appreciate that, right?  I mean, Kris can sing, but…" 

He's really developing _quite _the filter.  She isn't even press, and yet he still isn't going to say, 

“Oh, but have you seen how he humps his guitar and molests his piano bench and hops around on stage like a little energizer bunny?” 

Or maybe he _will _say it.  Jesus H. Christ, these fucking fans.  At least Kris is in a better mood, even if Adam is currently fighting off a pissy one.  Adam doesn’t tell him about calling him a humping energizer bunny in his head.  There’s no need to call him out for getting hit so hard by the music that he has sex with it on stage on a regular basis.  It would only embarrass him. 

“Jill isn’t fired, and she said the reporter isn’t going to say anything,” Kris tells Adam, the picture of contentment.  He’s leaning back against the couch, guitar cradled with him like it’s an extra limb. 

“I was really freaked out,” Kris admits with a little laugh.  “But it turns out it was no big deal.”  

Adam frowns, because it sounded earlier like it should have been at least a medium-sized deal.  But he can’t really trust his own judgment; he’s been having freakouts of his own, lately, hasn’t he?  They’re all suffering from an uneven sense of proportion. 

“I blame tour,” he says decisively, taking his seat next to Kris and propping his feet up on the table.  “Tour makes everything seem bigger than it is.” 

“I like tour,” Kris says.  “But yes.” 

“It makes America seem bigger than it is,” Adam goes on, because he babbles when he’s tired, which means that he’s been babbling for weeks now. 

“I don’t know, dude, America’s pretty big for _real_.”

“Hey!  Are you going to play for us?” It’s Danny, making the request from the doorway.  He likes to sing on the bus; Kris looks at him for a second, and at Matt and Michael following him and Anoop bringing up the rear, and lays his guitar down softly.

Adam suppresses a smirk.  It isn’t avoiding the spotlight, he thinks, so much as resisting Danny, and he shouldn’t find that as hilarious as he does, but what the hell.  Kris likes Danny, is as nice and affectionate with him as he is with anyone else, except when he can get away with being a subtly passive-aggressive little shit to him, because Danny grates on Kris in that way that people just _do _sometimes, for no real reason.  It’s kind of awesome.  Very human.  Nearly impossible to detect.  Danny is most definitely _not_ aware of it. 

“No,” Kris says, “no, let’s read fanfic,” and it stops being funny.  

Of course they’re all going to go along with this, because fanfic– or “badfic,” which is what Neil says he’s been sending them – is pretty fucking awesome.  They read it on the bus because everything is hilarious at four in the morning and they’ve been steadily losing it, mentally speaking, since about five shows in.  They kind of have no choice in the matter, what with the adrenaline and the exhaustion, and the completely losing track of where they are, and _when_, and the fact that they are all, essentially, pretty huge dorks.   

Well, except Anoop, to be fair, but Anoop is special like that.  And Scott, too, but that is much, much less endearing.   

And it isn’t that Adam even likes all of them – he definitely feels like a secret bitch about at least four of them most of the time – but he has kind of been Stockholm Syndrome-d into a of love affair with the whole group, and he’s okay with that.  It’s tour.  It’s going well, which means…general affection and owning your inner dork.  

“Sit,” Kris orders. 

“The glambulge compels you,” Anoop murmurs, and Adam reaches for his laptop because yes, he’d told them all when he saw that Neil had sent him some new stuff, so he can’t pretend that he has nothing to share.  The glambulge is pretty much a staple of their conversation, ever since Kris used it one time as an excuse to get out of playing basketball.  It had been obvious to Adam that Kris was just too tired, wanted to rest, hadn’t had a day off like the others, but…didn’t want to say that, didn’t want to rub his recording contract in their faces.  Adam, who wanted a nap too, goddamn it, had been about thirty seconds away from stepping in and just shutting the whole thing down in three words or less, when Kris said, 

“I’m not allowed to get more than ten feet away from the glambulge or I’ll die.  So it’s Adam you have to convince here.” 

Which was the kind of statement that definitely did the job getting them off his back.  Contemplating _that_ mental image, Adam had forwarded a bunch of Neil’s emails to them and then kicked them out to go read up on it. 

There are three new links from Neil.  About the first two he’s simply commented, _These made me pee_, but about the third, there’s an entire paragraph.  Adam kicks Kris to get his attention and turns the laptop towards him:   
__  
You know I’ve only been sending you badfic up until this point, which is like a parody of the real thing.  Now, I could generalize and say that the real thing writes you like a slutty queen and Kris like a twelve year old girl, but there **is** some good writing in there.  The good news is that even when it’s good it still doesn’t feel like it’s about **you**, which is how I rationalize the fact that I didn’t close the tab immediately when I discovered this stuff.  But this one actually has an eerily accurate handle on both of you.  It weirded me out.  I feel extremely dirty and creepy.  Hence the sharing.  Enjoy!  
  
Adam hovers the mouse over the link – a question.  A question he’s not sure why he’s asking.  _He’d _only clicked on the link because he’d been lulled by the badfic and hadn’t really known what he was getting into, even with the explanation.  Kris, however, glancing between Adam and the screen, is a little quicker on the uptake.  

“This is the stuff that’s just, like, us having sex?” 

“I believe so.” 

“Well, yeah, totally, then.” 

Adam laughs, and plans to have a stern talk with the part of him that wants Kris to be serious.  The part of him that is deluded into thinking that Kris _does _look a little intrigued.  He opens the badfic for the rest of them.

-

 

Touring with a bunch of horny straight guys doesn't top anyone's list of gay fantasies.  It's depressing.  And it's not just that they all want someone to suck them off but won't help each other out; and it's not just that he's horny, too.  Danny is telling a really long joke, and Matt is messing around in front of the mirror because Allison took one look at him this morning and said, “Oh, the _hair_, man.  The _hair_.”

“Caring about your hair is a straight guy thing?”

“Matt is a straight guy thing,” Adam tries to explain, and Kris squints up at him while Anoop shakes his head. 

“We're a bunch of dorky musicians.  No one but you looks at us and says, _oh, testosterone_.”

“That is _exactly_ what people think when they look at me,” Kris objects, struggling to sit up and look fierce – and failing, because the couch swallows him up even though he's stretched out completely straight.  He gives up and lies back down, hands under his head, feet not nearly reaching the end.  Adam chuckles. 

“Yeah, I know,” Kris says, “I'm tiny.  Pocket Idol.  What_ever__._”

Adam laughs again and looks Kris over.  “Oh, testosterone.”

“You know it, and you betta recognize.”

“Words that are less effective,” Anoop notes, “when you sound like you're falling asleep.”

Weirdly, that is almost exactly what Drake had said, irritably, the night before.  Adam deliberately stops biting his thumbnail and grimaces at it instead.

God, he's not even all that horny, just – desperate to get his gay on.  Drake hadn’t really been mad at him.  Tour is hell, and Drake gets that.  They'd had sex, in the end.  Sort of.  Half-hearted, more-like-plain-old-jerking-off, not-really-very-satisfying phone sex.

“I need to do something gay,” Adam tells the bus at large, and Matt snickers, looking back at them in the mirror for the first time.

“Don't call them things, Adam.  They're people, too.”

“That is the straightest thing you have ever said,” Adam informs him.  “And you are the reason that I need some more gay in my life, dammit.”

“Take me for a walk, then,” Kris says, his eyes still closed.  “I'm gay bait.”

Adam stares down at him and then almost falls down, he's laughing so hard.  It really isn't safe to tell Kris anything.

“The mental images,” Anoop says, “are disturbing.”

“You mean awesome.”

“He does mean awesome,” Adam agrees.  He smiles down at Kris over the back of the couch, and Kris smiles back without opening his eyes when Adam says, “Okay, then.  Fetch.”

“You're mixing your metaphors,” Anoop points out.

Adam lets himself sink down to the floor, propped up by the couch under his arm pits.  His arm span is longer than Kris.   “Hey,” he says to Matt.  “You want some help with your makeup?”

“Nah, I'm good.”  Matt gives up on his hair and replaces his fedora, and Adam cocks an eyebrow at him.

“You probably don't want to hear my view on gender roles, but there's no shame in wanting to be pretty.”

“_He_ don't have the chops to _pretty_,” Danny laughs in that stupid, nasal Matt voice that no one else should really attempt, but they all do anyway.  Matt pouts at him.  Adam says,

“Oh, I don't know.  He has nice eyelashes.”

“Is that all it takes?” Anoop asks dryly.

“It helps.”  Adam eyes Anoop critically.  “You, though, have a lot of potential.  If you ever want to, you know.”  He waves his hand.  “Tap it.”

“I thought Kris was the pretty one,” Matt says.

“Of course he is, but look at him.”  Adam gets back to his feet so that he can gaze sadly down at Kris, who doesn't seem to be listening.  Maybe he's actually fallen asleep.  “He's hopeless,” Adam says.

“Hopeless,” Danny repeats, nodding.

“I mean, he just refuses to make an effort.”  Adam pokes Kris in the stomach.  “Hey,” he says, and Kris comes out of it, smiling at him instinctively and biting that fucking lip, and Adam moves – reaches down and takes Kris' lower lip and tugs lightly – pulling it free of Kris' teeth.  He presses it, full and red and wet, between his fingers.  Kris' eyebrows shoot up, and he's looking up at Adam partly like he's waiting for a punch line, and partly like – what?  What _is_ that look?  It shifts Adam outside himself so that he’s seeing the two of them through the lens of a camera, an image of what this moment would look like frozen on a computer screen.

“Don't do that,” he hears himself say.  “It's a bad habit.  You're damaging the talent.”

Kris smiles against his fingers, lip stretching, flexing, soft and firm at the same time.  “The talent,” he says, “is in the hands.  And the vocal chords,” he adds, an afterthought.

“The girls,” Adam says firmly, “love Kris for a reason.”

Kris laughs.  “The talent's in the hands,” he repeats.  His eyes sparkle.  He doesn’t look away.

Adam lets go.  “One of these days,” he says, “you guys are going to realize that listening to me is in your best interests.”

“I've already done nail polish,” Kris says, and yawns.  “So who knows, right?”

“My wife painted my toenails once,” Danny says, and they turn to stare at him and he smirks – smiles – whatever that face is.  “She was bored, and she just – because I like pedicures, right?  So she was giving me a foot massage, and — ”

“I had a girlfriend who was really into that.”  Anoop smiles reminiscently.  Matt says,

“You've been holding out on us, bro.”

“I forgot,” Danny says.  “Can you imagine?  I forgot that even happened.  Even when I saw your painted toes, man, I didn't remember until right this second.”

Michael says that he can't imagine that his wife would let him touch her makeup –

“Have you ever asked?”

“No,” Michael admits.

“Well, let us know how that goes,” Adam says.

He's not sure how he's speaking so naturally.  He can feel his pulse jumping in his wrist, and there's a trace of Kris' saliva on his thumb.  And how the actual fuck does the discussion end up at sports so quickly?  Adam rolls his eyes and waits it out, breathing softly to himself.  Scott sits beside him, with Todd.

“What happened before?” Scott asks.  “Everyone got so quiet.”

“Before when?”

“Before.”  Scott speaks slowly, like always.  “You were giving Kris beauty tips.”

“Oh, that.  I wasn't letting him bite his lips.”

“He grabbed Kris' lip,” Todd supplies helpfully.

“Oh.”  Scott nods a few times.  “You don't try to give _me _beauty tips.”

Adam glances at him.  “I could do good work with you, if you want.  You have great coloring.”

Scott chuckles.  “I'll let you know.  But don't go grabbing me.”

“Fair enough.”  Across the small space, Michael, Matt, and Anoop are debating the merits of something that Adam knows nothing about and cares less to.  Danny nods along and puts in a word from time to time and laughs with Matt at...something.  Kris doesn't seem to be paying very much attention – he’s conjured his guitar up from nowhere, again – but he comments, too, once or twice, and the others listen to him and then Anoop says something emphatic, with hand gestures.

Kris' hands are graceful on his guitar – slender but strong; clean nails.  Adam finds that he's imitating their movements, tracing a chord progression he can't even follow into his thigh, over and over again.

-

 When the protest happens, Adam has other things on his mind.  Like the one-second flash fantasies that keep pulling him down before he can stop them; Adam blames the fan fiction story for giving his libido some vivid imagery to work with, but these aren't images from fan fiction.  It's not some literary Kris he keeps slipping down into daydreams with, plunging down into heady heat where he doesn't _see_him as much as feel him – tucked against Adam's chest, fingertips ghosting over Adam's cheek, open mouth sucking his tongue.  It's not like Adam even needs to picture a face, he's not _picturing_anything, he's living it, and it's the whole person, even if it's just a flash, it's all there in the moment – the plaid and the teasing and the guitar calluses and the deep slow drawl and he's Adam's, his Kris, his _baby._  For less than a second.

At least it’s never anything more than kissing.

It can’t be okay to think this much about kissing Kris, though.

Kris and Katy tell each other everything, down to sharing when they have crushes on other people, because Kris says that it's bound to happen, but that if it's something that you joke about and share with each other then it isn't a big deal.

“Keeping it inside makes it more, like, _intense_, and you don't want to have that kind of secret between you,” Kris told him once, and of course he’s right.  Adam is a good actor, but he hates fake shit.  It bothers him, being with Kris all the time, waiting this out – hoping to get the fuck over it.

And that – that was _fuck_, the wrong mental leap to make there.  What he _should_have been wondering in the first place is whether this is something he's supposed to talk to Drake about, or whether you don't have to share everything like that until you've been together for eight years and no one will feel threatened by a meaningless crush when there's an actual relationship in progress.

He hasn't spoken to Drake in a week because he doesn't want to feel like he's keeping secrets from him, and he's still more bothered about _that_ than about a bunch of nutcases with poster board when Mike comes into the dressing room after his set and lets them know what's going on.  He tells them not to go out there and shows them the video he took on his phone, and – yeah, that's kind of huge.  There have been protests before this, sure, but they were all kind of pathetic.  Ten people with homemade signs who’d earned nothing but eye-rolls from passing traffic.  But this is...this is _big_.  That is a scary crowd, an intimidating crowd, and some loud-ass chanting.  Like all the assholes in the state found each other and got fucking _organized_.

Adam hangs out on the dressing room couch, with Alli, who is perched on the arm, swinging her feet in wide circles, and Anoop, who seems to be trying to get a read on Adam.  And with Kris.  He sees the light, mocking tilt to Kris' eyebrow and knows what his own expression must look like.  Maybe Kris can explain the concept of contempt to the others.  Adam doesn't really feel a need to dwell on this topic.

If only someone would actually say something.  Adam is pretty sure he's generally fabulous at small talk.  Or just talking, without actually needing anyone to listen.  Either way –

"So," Anoop says, "how about those Padres?"

Adam snorts – almost laughs.  Kris sucks one cheek into his mouth, an amused, downward smirk.  Derision is especially pretty on him, with that mouth.  No.  No thinking about Kris’s mouth.  Anoop finally gives up on subtlety and says,

"So we’re just not going to talk about – "

"Yup."

"They're idiots, right?" Alli says, feet still swinging, and Adam suddenly realizes that it's really a question for her – that it's on them, that they're the idiots, that that's enough. Adam leans around the back of Kris’s head to see her face, the uncertainty there, and Kris is already shoving against him to make room and pulling her onto the couch with them, telling her,

"Yeah, and it's – well, it's actually not okay.  But you can’t change people."

"It's totally okay," Adam says sharply.  "Because fuck them."

Kris looks at Adam and seems to change his mind about whatever he was going to say.  “Same difference," is what he comes out with, and it sort of is.

“You can be angry,” Allison says in a small but surprisingly calm voice.  “I thought you'd be angry, man.”

“Their issues are their own,” Adam says indifferently.  “I have a life, and it exists completely outside of their bullshit.”

“I just think—”

“Let it go,” Adam tells her.  This kind of thing is just one of a million rejections, and it's from people who don't even matter, so he'd really rather not dredge up the hurt that he could still feel at this if he wanted to.  He has enough going on already.

Of course, that's when Kris decides to take his hand.

Kris has one arm around Allison, and she's snuggled into his shoulder, looking at her hands in her lap.  A second ago, his other arm was lying alongside Adam's.  It's sort of weird, but the same way that the fan fiction itself didn't set Adam off, this kind of physical closeness doesn't usually, either.  He's become inured to it.  It's just part of the way they are with each other.  Something really different, really unexpected, has to happen for him to feel weird about Kris.

They may hug, they may in fact cuddle on the couch, but come on; they’ve never _held hands_.  And the way he just reaches out and takes it, no hesitation, just an act of closeness, of cohesion, because maybe Adam is a little pissed off about this, after all.  Maybe Kris is, too. His fingers are warm and slender and callused and firm.

Adam's eyes jump to Kris' face.  Kris is looking right at him, directly into him, and Adam lasts barely three seconds before he jerks his eyes away.  It’s that look again.  What the hell is he supposed to do with Kris looking at him like that?

He doesn't pull his hand away, though.  He can't.  They chat from time to time with the others, Danny and Megan and Lil and whoever else pops in and out, and the mood lightens considerably and Adam even thanks Mike for taking a stand on Twitter again.  And still Kris is holding his hand.

“I want to do something,” Allison says, “I have so much energy I just want to go out there, and I don't even know, dance at them or something, man.”

"That's an _excellent_ idea,” Kris remarks, over-enunciating as if to convince them that he's serious, and Adam smirks at him, though God knows how he manages it.

“You want to join her?”

They all laugh.  And still Kris is holding his hand.

The next morning, Adam still isn't sure how to feel about that.

It was solidarity, not a fucking declaration of love.  Well, in a _way_it was a declaration of love, but not like _that_, no matter how intense his eyes – fuck.  Adam is actually starting to think that even if Kris _does_ have feelings for him—which he doesn’t—but if he did—maybe Adam would rather not know about it.

“Because he's married,” Dani says.  Adam picks at his nail polish, tucking the phone under his ear.

“Yeah.  It wouldn't change anything, right?  It's just—he just messes with my head every time he looks at me.  Last I checked he was straight.”

“So he wanted to hold your hand because...”

“To be there for me?” It sounds weak, but he wants it to sound weak.  “Fuck, Dani, he's married.”

Dani was supposed to be his wake-up call this morning, but he'd already been up.  They don't get to talk that often, and when they do it's usually at weird hours.  The time difference actually makes things easier, in that respect.

They've been going over the facts on Kris for an hour now.  They haven't mentioned Drake once.

“It was just a stupid crush,” he says, and she laughs.

“Sorry, I know you don't think this is funny, but god, you're so fucked.”

Dani laughs at everything.  He isn't offended.  “Do you have anything helpful to say?”

“No.”  She's quiet for a minute.  “I'm sorry.  You really are fucked.”

“Brad said — ” because of course Brad picked up on this ages ago, and has been an insightful dick about it ever since — “that if I want something to happen, _I _have to make a move, because he isn't going to turn his life upside down for me if he thinks I only have a crush.”

She doesn't answer right away.

“But why the fuck am I even thinking like that?  Because he looks at me sometimes like he—it’s ridiculous.  Anyway, I'm not that guy,” he says, and he hates the way his voice breaks, but he really, really wishes that he _was_that guy.  For five minutes.

“You think that Brad's right.”  He can picture her shrugging, giving him a look from under her eyelashes.  “I would say give it more time.  See what signals he's sending you.”

“Because I’ll suddenly find myself able to understand them?”

She laughs.  “Just—be patient.”  She stresses that.  “Don't do anything you'll regret.”

Patient.  He can be patient.  He can hold off with questions until he has a better idea of what to ask.  He can keep inappropriate kissing fantasies...to a minimum.  And, sitting in a hotel lobby on three hours of sleep and two cups of coffee, he makes an important decision:  it's _not_ going to kill him to do all of this.  Being around Kris is easy, whether it should be or not.  He's not pining.  It doesn't _hurt__.  _When Kris smiles tiredly at all of them and collapses into the chair next to Adam, it's not _fine_ or some other lie he'd tell himself.  It's Kris.

“You look like shit,” Matt says affably.  Kris just shakes his head.

“I do believe,” Anoop muses, “that I hate travel.”

“Come on, rock star,” Matt cajoles, and maybe it’s annoying when _he _does the voice, too.  Or maybe Adam’s just cranky again.

“That's no way to be a rock star,” Matt is still saying.  Adam wants to siphon off some of that energy for himself.  He checks his watch.

“You were up early,” Kris murmurs.  He's slouched so low that his face isn't even visible over the edge of the chair, and for once his feet are solidly on the ground.  In other news, it sounds like he came by Adam's room this morning, and Adam's stomach jumps.

“I was up at five,” Adam says.  “And don't think I'm happy about it.”

“I slept so deep, man,” Danny says, “I thought I was late when I woke up, it was the craziest thing.  I looked over at the clock and it was only six-thirty.  I was covered in sweat.  You know when you fall into this deep sleep and you get all hot?”

“Why are you all up so _early_?” Kris' voice, incredulous and exhausted, emerges from the depths of the chair.  Matt or Danny should bubble tweet _this_, if they're going to try to capture the essence of the group.  It's equally as legit as when they're all hopped up on caffeine.  Anoop crosses his legs and says,

“We're on time.  The girls are late.”

“No, we aren't.”  Allison plops herself heavily onto the arm of Adam's chair, bright-eyed, and cranes her neck over to look at Kris.  “That's some impressive gymnastics positions you have going on there, son.”

Kris groans at either the volume or the exuberance, which are pretty toned down for Allison but pretty out of place in this group.

“What the—”

“Shhhh.” Adam pats her arm gently.  “People are still sleeping here.”

“Oh, come on—”

“How,” and now Kris sounds deeply fascinated, like he's pondering one of the greater mysteries of the universe, “are you all so awake right now?”

Meg, Lil, and Mrs. Iraheta are still coming up from the elevators, and Allison glances at them, grins at Adam, and stage-whispers, “Well, _I_ had _coffee_.  Don't tell Mama!”

Adam laughs.  Allison had been a mild coffee drinker before the tour, but when she'd started mainlining the stuff, her mother had gotten a little freaked out that she was going to stunt her growth.

Since that's kind of a moot point, Adam doesn't mind aiding and abetting a coffee habit.  Especially since he could hardly pretend to take it seriously when he'd laughed for a minute straight when Allison told him.

“My boys are looking so _fine_this morning,” Allison says, taking them all in and practically rubbing her hands together.  “And by fine, I mean dorky and dead.”

Matt squawks indignantly but Allison shakes her head at him and stretches her eyes and her mouth in opposite directions, her habitual crazy face.  Then she squints at Adam.  If she insults _his_looks, he'll tell her mother about the coffee so fast – and he'll put yellow dye in her shampoo –

“Even you don't look so hot, man.  Are you feeling okay?”

“I didn't get a lot of sleep.”  He shrugs.  “I'll lie down on the bus for a while.”

Danny and Matt begin to tease him in some nonsensical way, something about babies and needing a nap, but Allison presses her hand on his arm for a second, not looking at him, and then says to Matt, “Dude, it's not like you couldn't use a nap sometimes.  You're like Mr. Crankypants when you're tired, you know—”

“Dude—”

“Mr. Crankypants—”

Adam wonders how the hell she picks up on these things so easily.  That was definitely a supportive piece of arm touching, even if she is, moments later, giving Kris a heart attack by repeating _dude_and _crankypants_at Danny and Matt with varying degrees of emphasis and volume.  Adam swallows a grin at Anoop's detached expression; Anoop hates pointless noise even more than Kris does, but he's developed an almost philosophic attitude towards it after all this time.  Anoop sees Adam's look and rolls his eyes, smirking a little.  Whatever, Allison is cute. 

He wants to bring her on the bus with him.  He wants to have his eyes fall somewhere other than Kris’ mouth—and, when he quickly looks away, on the two-inch strip of skin peeking out above his ankle.  His _ankle_, for fuck's sake.  He wants to _not_fall in so naturally beside Kris when they head out to the buses.

Kris glances up at him, eyes smiling because that's how he looks at Adam, tiny and exhausted and glowing in the early morning sunlight.  His hair is sticking up like it always does, and the light just clings to his skin, and Adam forgets to smile back.  And then Kris is just _looking_at him, _again_, that look, smile slipping, and Adam looks away.

He gets on the bus, goes to his bunk, and closes the curtain.

So.  It turns out this crush might actually kill him, though he blames Kris more than himself for that.  Adam gets out his phone and calls Drake and convinces him to book tickets to the first show he can make it to. 

-

 It's a matter, really, of shitting or getting off the pot. Kris isn't Adam's boyfriend, and he isn't _going_ to be Adam's boyfriend, but Drake might be, if Adam would just let it happen.

It's exactly what he needed, actually – to realize, really feel it, knowthat he just _can't_ be hung up on Kris.  He talks to Drake every day and it's amazing how clear it is that he'd been holding back until now.  It feels unbelievable to be really _present_ for the first time in months.  Drake can feel it, too.  He's more playful.  Adam realizes, now that it's fading, that there was a degree of wariness in how Drake spoke to him.

And damn, he's pretty.  Adam is so horny it hurts.

When Drake shows up at the concert together with Katy – they're sitting together and everything, they seem to have clicked really well – Adam feels a single twinge, because the two of them are sort of symbolic of his lies and secrets and...guilt?  But he isn't keeping secrets anymore, and Kris and Katy go off somewhere together, and Drake is scruffy and really cute, and it feels like maybe things are finally getting to how they're supposed to be.

It's also cute how Drake just likes following Adam around backstage.  It's not like they can have that much time together before the show—Adam's doing press, sound check, makeup, the meet and greet—but he can look over and see Drake there, making up to anyone and everyone like the potty-mouthed sweetheart he is, and grinning at Adam whenever their eyes meet.

It's kind of like having a boyfriend.

“I should have gotten the early flight.  I could have been here last night,” Drake says when they finally find themselves alone in the dressing room.  They settle onto the couch.

“Yes, you should have,” Adam says, because protesting that he needs his sleep and wouldn't have been able to handle Drake at four in the morning would be neither a romantic, nor a sensitive response.

“Well, I'll make it up to you tonight.”  Drake waggles his eyebrows suggestively and Adam laughs, but suddenly Drake's expression changes from cute-sexy to smirk and he slides off the couch to kneel in front of Adam.  Adam raises his eyebrows.

“I can be neat,” Drake assures him, almost slyly.  “You'll look fine on stage.  Come on, this is totally hot.”  His hand is already there, and Adam doesn't really see any reason to protest.

He kind of likes having a boyfriend. 

-

Adam doesn't love getting his makeup done for photo shoots.  He always wants to get involved, and that can irritate the people responsible for creating his look, who are already irritating _him_, so...it's a vicious circle.  And no, he's not a diva, fuck you very much.  He doesn't insist on having his way when the professionals aren't open to it, not unless there's something very wrong going down, and that hasn't happened yet.

But this, today, is for his _cover_, his album cover, which turns him _on_ in a whole new way and he has all these ideas and it's not that they don't want him to be involved – he has to approve the results, after all – but they're very professional and they have ideas of their own.

There's one assistant who's on his side, who keeps shooting him reassuring smiles and continuing to press for Adam's suggestions.  Adam is grateful, until he sees Drake watching the guy with folded arms, terrifically unimpressed.

"What is it?" Adam asks.  "Are we being stupid and we should just let the big guys do their job?"

"No, you have some good ideas."  Drake crosses his legs, too, and leans sideways against the wall.  "Five bucks says he gives you his number before we leave today."

"Who?"  Adam follows Drake's glance. “That assistant guy?”

“His name is Jasen, he's told you that about five times.  He even told you how to spell it.”  Jasen is looking over at them again, and Drake waves.  “I'm _right here_, bitch.”

Drake realizes that Adam is biting back a smile; he rolls his eyes, grinning a little, too.  But Adam isn't really sold, even if Drake is cute when he's jealous.  Not that it wouldn't be nice to have a _guy_ throwing himself at Adam for once, but he's not sure that's what this is.  When he gets his own tour, Adam plans to build up a stable of very, very gay groupies and never let them wear shirts, just for a change of pace.  But this guy, he thinks, just has the good taste to know that Adam's right about the shoes.

“He's in _love_ with you,” Drake smirks, watching Adam.  “Stop doubting me.  I know these things.  It's all in the eyes.”

Eyes.  Honey brown.  Kris looking at him like...like he's everything that Kris...fucking fuck.  Apparently, Adam has trigger words.  He needs to be wary of people talking about eyes.  Drake is still speaking; thoughtfully, now.

“Is it taking advantage if he's _that _desperate?”

“Come on,” Adam says crossly, because yeah, fine, Jasen is giving him googly eyes, “he’s star struck, leave him alone.”

Drake shrugs.  “Just looking out for you.  And you’re definitely right about the shoes.”

“I know, right?” Adam says, and drags Drake over there to find out what’s holding things up.

-

It’s a good day.  They eat dinner in the hotel restaurant and then Drake jumps Adam on the way to the elevators and pushes him into a random hole in the wall closet for an impromptu blow job, which is nice.  Until the part where they hear Katy say, “I'm not mad,” right outside the door, and Adam freezes with his hands on his zipper.

This would be more awkward if they hadn’t already finished, so at least there’s that.  Adam glances at Drake, who snickers.  The time to say something would be _now_, if they're going to, but Adam doesn't move.

“So then why are we still talking about this?”  Kris doesn't sound angry, either, but he does sound tired, and their voices fade away as they continue down the hallway.  Drake turns to Adam curiously.

“Trouble in paradise?” he asks, and Adam shrugs.  Adam is kind of disturbed, actually, but it’s none of Drake’s business.

“Even happy couples have disagreements,” Adam informs him.  Drake isn’t done with the topic yet, though.  He frowns at Adam and says,

“I don’t get you guys.”

“Get us how?”  Adam unlocks the door and hopes that there’s someone standing right outside, because their faces would undoubtedly be priceless.  But the hallway is empty.

“You and your boy toy Kris.”  Drake isn’t being bitchy; he’s legitimately puzzled.  He grins.  “He is just so fucking _straight, _you know?”

Ironically, no, Adam is having trouble with that particular truth at the moment, but okay.  “Being straight doesn’t mean—”

“Sure it does,” Drake says comfortably.  Adam keeps a handle on his irritation.

“You really don't know anything about him.”

“Yeah?”  Drake grins at him.  “Surprise me.  Tell me how he isn't exactly what I think.”

“I don't know what you think.”

“I think that he's a nice guy with a nice fucking life,” Drake says.

“You know what?”  Adam doesn't think that he could roll his eyes any harder without pulling a muscle.  “He does have a nice life. But that doesn't mean -- shit is real for him, okay?”

Drake isn't smiling anymore.

“And even a nice guy might get a bit of a bruised ego from what the press keeps dishing out to him for basically not being me, but he's actually, like _really_, actually, my biggest fan, which goes way beyond _nice_.”

“I'm sorry,” Drake tries to say, but Adam gets to it first.

“Sorry.  Pet peeve of mine.”

Drake nods and Adam thinks that he gets it, and that he really was just asking, and that he really doesn’t know anything about Kris.  They look at each other for a minute, and Drake is nervous, which he should be—but not too nervous, which is even better.  Adam finally rolls his eyes and kisses him, and Drake immediately relaxes and gets into it; so Adam can relax, too, and put a hand at the back of Drake’s neck, and pull him in closer.

“You know, upstairs,” he murmurs against Drake’s mouth, and Drake opens his eyes, “upstairs, there’s a bed and everything.”

“No shit?” Drake says, and they make it to the elevators this time. 

- 

Adam is used to tossing and turning, but Kris is the one who stays up late, the next few nights.  He’s not wired, like he’d been towards the beginning of the tour, more quiet, actually, just sitting up past his usual bedtime – slumped in a chair with his guitar, a little dead-eyed, maybe; a little burnt out.  Adam’s not really worried about him, because he’s pretty sure that Kris just needs to get laid.  Whatever was going on in New York, it seems likely that sex wasn’t involved.

Anyway, he’s not surprised that Kris’ bunk is empty when he wakes up with a jolt at four-thirty in the morning, inappropriately alert and annoyed as fuck about it.  This tour is hell on any kind of sleep schedule.  Time has started to feel meaningless in an emo-existentialist-dreamy-philosophical kind of way, and he knows that at some point they had two Mondays in one week, which is not okay, whatever he thought of it at the time.  Also, the bunks were clearly not designed for a man of his size, and he sighs and slips down, silently, grateful for the couch in the other room.

He stops when he hears voices, or one voice, rather, pitched low.  Kris.  Right.  On the phone at this hour?  With Katy, most likely.  Adam hesitates, just listening for a second, judging the conversation, deciding whether or not to intrude.  Kris’ voice is deeper on the phone, and when he’s tired.  But he sounds a little animated…annoyed, actually.

“I don’t think it’s hot,” he says irritably, and Adam raises his eyebrows, grins to himself, feels inordinately pleased that Kris is having this kind of conversation.

“_No_.”  There’s a pause, and then Kris laughs a little, adorably.  “I don’t think I can.  You’re the one who told me I can wake the dead…_no.  _I am!  I’m on the couch.  The bunks are maybe ten feet away from me.”

The muscles low in Adam’s stomach tighten just a little.  Wake the dead?  Kris says, “It isn’t.  No, it isn’t.”  Pause.  “I told you, I just don’t get what would be hot about it.  No, it’s…stop, I’m explaining.  It’s…I like to be with _you_.  I don’t need anyone else…involved.”  
_  
Damn, Kris._  Adam shakes his head and smiles in spite of himself.  Are they talking about threesomes, or getting caught?

“I wasn’t even thinking about that.”  Kris sounds a little strangled and a little amused, both at the same time.  “And you thought it sucked, too, you said…exactly.  Exactly.”   Kris laughs again, a full, lush laugh, and Adam can practically see him, leaning his head back, falling sideways against the arm of the couch.  “I still can’t believe you did that.  What?  Well, now you know.  No audiences, and no girls from school.”

Whoa.  He thinks it, it happens.  He’s definitely impressed that Kris _tried _a threesome.  It’s even endearing that he sucked at it.

“Come on, I called because I missed you,” Kris says.  “I’m homesick.  I never said I was horny.”  Katy says something and he almost snorts.  “No joke.  But we’ll be in the hotel in maybe three hours.  I can get my own room.  It’ll be—”

Kris hisses suddenly through his teeth.

“No,” he says, and Adam's ears prick up a little because there's _that _in his voice and Katy obviously just said something _very _right.  “I'm going to hang up on you if you—” Kris' breath hitches.  “_Stop _it,” he says.  “I told you I didn't want to—” his breath catches again, he's panting now, and a sound very much like a moan escapes him and is cut short.

“Katy,” he says breathlessly, and maybe he's asking her to stop, and maybe he isn't, but there’s a thread that Adam feels run through _him_, an itch just out of reach.  An ache, a small ache, in his cock.  An ache that wants to _grow_.  Dammit.  He should leave now.

“Katy.  Don’t,” Kris says, low, urgent.  “I swear I’ll hang up on you, I – _Jesus_.”  It’s almost a loss of control, just on the edge, and Adam holds a hand to the wall to steady himself as Kris groans so softly.  Adam’s other hand is cupping his cock, increasing its pressure, the hard, lacquered edges of his nails digging in at five separate points.  Kris’ voice floods all his senses, flickering yellow and orange behind his eyelids, stroking him roughly – not his own hand; the noises that Kris is making are muffled, the effort involved in keeping it down is obvious, and Adam grips his cock like _that’s _the way to keep himself in check, to keep him from going in and seeing what Kris is doing in there.  Kris is breathing hard, his voice is strained, and it sounds like his teeth are clenched when he says, once, “Please.”

Adam sees solid white.  Kris’ voice is still in his ear, panting and rough and entirely different than it’s ever been, and Adam still doesn’t know what kind of _please_ that is, but, “Yes,” Kris is breathing, a stifled sound, close by, divided from him by a thin wall, “yes, yes, oh, _god_ — I — _yes_,” and it’s like a voiceover for Adam’s body, like they’re caught in a rhythm together – and he comes hard and doesn’t even hear the rest of it because he’s coming back down from wherever he’d gone. 

- 

“I can't believe you did that,” Kris says, and he sounds legitimately pissed off but also completely fucked out.  Adam has a serious urge to poke his head through the door and see what Kris looks like right now, spread out on the couch like he must be — 

“I don't care,” Kris says, a little more in control of himself, a little angrier.  He's actually _angry.  _A part of Adam definitely thought that wasn't possible, and another part of him is kind of weirded out.  As far as Kris knows, they didn't get caught.  And he's never known Kris to be this uptight about anything.

“That's not the point.  This is what started this whole thing, and you just—would you—would you listen to me?” There's a long pause where it sounds like Kris is the one listening, and then he says, “That wouldn't make any difference, okay?  You can't— you can't objectify my friends like that.”

Okay.  What?

“No, I'm not going to ask him for _permission_.”  Adam freezes.  “Katy, I'm serious.  We talked about this.  I thought you-”

It’s a little late to pretend that he’s doing the right thing by going to bed and giving them their privacy; but he is, at least, in bed.  And determined not to even think about what he just heard until he’s gotten some sleep, because he’s on tour, and tour messes with everyone’s judgment and sense of proportion.  If, in the morning, Adam still suspects that Katy overcame Kris’s objections to a public setting by dirty talking to him about some guy…then he will deal with it in the morning.

It’s a good thing he’s so fucking exhausted, though.  Sleep comes fairly quickly, and in the morning, Adam can’t remember any of his dreams.  But he has bigger issues to deal with, anyway. 

- 

Adam has never understood the point of guilt.  He _is _aware that most people don’t actually choose to feel guilty, but he just doesn’t think that it’s a very healthy emotion.  Adam is more into positive change than self-flagellation.

So Drake is pulling a losing move by trying to make Adam feel guilty here.  It’s the _considerate _thing to do, to point out that they still aren’t exclusive, no matter how nice Drake’s visit was.  They never had a talk or anything, and nothing has really changed that would warrant it.  Adam is still on tour.  Moreover, he’d woken up all sticky that morning, because…he hadn’t changed his pants.  After…yeah.  He really doesn’t think that he can commit properly to Drake when he’s doing things like jerking off to Kris and Katy having phone sex.  And then forgetting to change his pants afterwards.

He _may _feel something closely resembling guilt about that.

“You’re giving me mixed signals, you know that, right?”

“Forget the signals,” Adam advises, “and listen to what I’m telling you with my _words_.”

Drake _hmms_.  “Your words are telling me that you're kind of an asshole.”

Except that he’s doing the rightthing.  Getting serious right now would be the real asshole-ish play, whether or not he can explain that to Drake.  Maybe yesterday this talk would have gone differently, but all that really means is that it’s a good thing that it’s happening today instead.

“I’m trying to do this right,” he says carefully.  Drake’s laugh is short.

“Yeah?  Because I told you that I missed you, and you told me that I can have sex with other people if I want.”

Adam bites the inside of his cheek.  He’d been a bitmore tactful than that_.  _He also has to go, now, although he’d timed the call that way on purpose, this time.  “We’ll talk more later, okay?”

“You’re being a _prick_,” Drake says quietly, and hangs up. 

- 

Adam doesn’t want to be a prick, but he still thinks that acting like he wants to get into Drake’s pants when he’s thinking about someone else’s pants entirely would be the more prickish thing to do.

That doesn’t mean that he needs to break up with Drake, which is why he _didn’t.  _They aren’t, after all, exclusive, and there’s no need to be a hypocrite when tour is over in three weeks.  Three weeks is plenty of time to convince himself that whatever the fuck is going on with Kris and Katy is none of his business; and then he and Drake can go on with their lives.

But being that this is now, rather than three weeks from now, Adam gets to the buses first, barricades himself in his bunk, and has been blessedly busy with show stuff every time he and Kris are in the same vicinity.  He hasn’t even looked directly at him, not once.

When it happens, half the guys are out signing for the fans, and the other half are at sound check.  Adam is alone in the dressing room trying to figure shit out when Kris shows up and starts violently at the sight of him.

Like, really recoils.  And looks nothing short of panicked.

And it’s like this.  Kris is probably the easiest person in the world to read, so when he sees Adam and jumps about a foot for no discernable reason, Adam has the frantic and hellish thought that he should maybe just stop pretending that Kris doesn’t look at him _exactly _the way Adam thinks he does.

He hadn’t really known that he was pretending, but he probably is, if that’s what his subconscious throws up at him.

It’s the exact thought that he’s been successfully _not _having every second since forever, because there are such things as non-threatening crushes, and because he’s pretty sure that thinking like this will make him automatically stupid.

Kris can’t exactly back away slowly, plus he has no idea that Adam has just been turned into a moron by the power of thought, but he visibly steels himself before he comes over and sits down and leans into Adam’s side, because that is what they do.  He is tense as _hell_.

And because Adam is now an idiot, this pisses him off.  He shifts quickly and says, “Can I tell you something?  I’ve been thinking, I mean, I love you and all, but you can be such a fucking tease.”

Because.  Because he is stupid.  And something stupid inside him thinks that lashing out is the right idea here.

Kris looks up.  “What?”

“We sit very close,” Adam’s stupidity says in Adam’s voice.

Kris still looks confused, which he should, because what the hell is Adam talking about?  He says, “Oh.”  He knits his brow in the direction of his shoulder, which is pressed up under Adam’s arm, like it’s a puzzle in need of solving.  “Why didn’t you say something before?”

“Why aren’t you moving away?” Adam counters, but his arm is actually around Kris’ shoulders, and _he _hasn’t moved it, so now he actually looks like the idiot he is.  Justice.  Kris barely seems to breathe and then he says slowly, warm against Adam and still in place,

“Sorry.  I didn't think it mattered.”

“You didn't think it _mattered_—”

Great.  Now he's faking outrage.  But a tiny part of him is actually spitting, _dammit all those pictures_.  He says dryly, “Honey, you know I’m gay, you know you’re cute, why on earth would you think that it’s okay to sit in my lap whenever the fancy hits you?”

Since there are about seven hundred reasons why, most of which revolve around Adam _not really having any problem with it whatsoever_, Kris should by all rights punch him right now.  But of course it’s impossible to pick a fight with Kris, even if his eyes do widen, like he’s only just realized that he can move if he wants.

“I just thought—you know,” he says as he scoots clumsily.  “that you’re—” he actually smiles, because his personal fucking beauty is always an amusing topic for him, like it's a joke, like it isn't—“you’re appreciative, you know?  More than really attracted?  I mean, I’ve thought people were cute before,” he says with a funny little half-smile, and then gives his head a little shake, clearly irritated with himself.  He should be, because yeah, that's stupid.  He doesn't share a room for months and months, share a bizarre alternate life and a chemistry that has the time to deepen and grow, and definitely doesn’t fucking snuggle up on every available surface, with the hot chick he meets at the bank.

“Look,” Kris says, looking up at him, and there's no hesitancy, no defensiveness, but—maybe—a trace of that intensity that has scared Adam off every time he's seen it.  And dammit.  _Dammit.  Look_, Kris is saying, and that's a word that probably leads to a way out of this stupid-ass conversation Adam started, probably leads to Kris claiming that he can fix this, but Adam is a jackass, no matter what Kris thinks he can take responsibility for, so no, Adam can't _look._  
  
He's actually, literally, not looking.  His face is in his hands.  Kris is concerned, he’s reaching out, and Adam feels a heavy, wet crumbling inside his chest, the slow collapse of the perfect sandcastle.

“Hey,” Kris is saying, a little uncertain now, and Adam gathers himself and says,

“Oh, fuck.”

He means it, too.

“Look, I'll—”

“Kris,” Adam says, “I heard you on the phone with Katy.”

They're facing each other again.  Kris stares at him, eyes wide, mouth open in a perfect O, the same shocked face Adam watched him make a dozen times over the course of the show.  Kris is speechless.  Heat surges low in Adam's chest, in his head, and it's not quiet, it's loud in there.  “I need to know,” Adam says, “what the hell that's all about.”

He doesn't expect the reaction he gets.  Kris' mouth tightens.  He turns his face away, grimly, deliberately.  “No,” he says, “you don't.”

And Adam, still both moron and jackass, raises his eyebrows.  “Don’t you want my permission, though?”

Kris doesn't react for a second.  Then he looks straight at Adam exactly as if he’d like nothing more than to shove his tongue as far as possible down Adam’s throat, if only to shut him the hell up.  But whatever he plans to say while wearing that expression is lost when the door bangs open on Danny and Allison.

“Hi,” Allison says brightly.  “Want to hear something _crazy_?  The fans are asking for you guys.”

Adam doesn't know if he can align his features into anything remotely resembling casual or even _normal_ at the moment.  If he opens his mouth he's either going to squeak or pull a never-ending multicolored scarf from his throat.  Allison's eyes flicker from him to Kris and back and then she leaps at Adam.

“Oh, hey, man, I wanted to ask you.  Will you watch that movie with me later?  Anoop picked it up today.  You said you’d watch it.”

Adam focuses on Allison.  She's the usual ball of energy, bouncing on her toes, and she’s glancing from him to Kris to Danny and back.  He clears his throat.  “The football movie?” he asks.

“I haven't seen it either,” Danny says, as he crosses to the fridge and gets out a few bottles of water.  “I've never even heard of it but they all keep saying it's a classic.  And I'm like, man, I don't know movies at all.  I'm so sheltered, it's crazy.”

Adam realizes that he's gnawing at his thumbnail and stops.

“You should watch it.”  Kris' jaw is squared, the look gone.  He is unbelievably hot, though, gazing levelly at Adam.  Fucking beautiful.  “It's a good movie,” Kris says.

Adam shrugs.  Danny hands Allison some water bottles.

“Not my type,” Adam says.

“Pretty guys in tight pants,” Allison points out, trying to open the door with both hands full.  Kris goes to help her.

“It has a happy ending,” he says over his shoulder.

Adam doesn't even know what that's supposed to mean to him, except maybe that Kris is asking Adam to trust him and let this go.  And Adam _really_ doesn't think that's going to happen, but he isn't going to get anything out of Kris right now, because Kris is going to go sign for the fans with or without him like a cute, sneaky, slightly angry bastard.

“Okay,” he says, “I'm coming,” and follows Danny out the door.

-

Kris is obviously avoiding him by not watching the movie.

It’s _Remember the Titans_, and he wouldn’t have thought it was Allison’s style, but he can admit that there is some novelty in seeing Ryan Gosling act at age, like, twelve.  And shirtless locker room scenes are fun, even if there aren’t nearly enough of them.  Actually, Allison doesn’t seem too into it; he thinks she might have just said the first distracting thing to pop into her head, earlier, and then Danny had gone and made it happen.

All the guys—except Kris—plus Allison—are sprawled around, fixed on the screen in the usual tired daze.

He’s only watching because Allison asked him to, and no one objects when he leaves.  Which he does when he starts identifying with the straight guy.  The straight guy who’s comically frantic to know whether his blond, Californian roommate—who goes around kissing shirtless guys in locker rooms—is, in fact, gay.  Too much irony, right there, but the _dialogue_:

“If it don’t matter,” the blond asks reasonably, “what’s the big deal?”

“I gotta _know_.”

Adam shouldn’t be identifying with either of these guys.  The blond is a _quarterback_.  And he’s the best kind of evil, with that little smirk.

Kris isn’t evil.

“Know what?” the blond asks innocently, and the other guy squeaks,

“You know what I gotta know, don’t mess with my mind!”

Kris isn’t evil, Kris isn’t messing with his mind, Kris is just pacing between the bunks with his hands in his pockets, and shit.  He was supposed to be in bed, not up and looking so lost and sad that Adam moves towards him before they flinch at the same time and he stops.

But they’re face to face and less than two feet apart.  Kris looks like he might bolt at any second; grabbing him and kissing him is most likely _not_ the way to keep him there.  Really.  In his head, though, it’s like Kris taking his hand.  Like pulling him back from somewhere out of reach, like reminding him that Adam is not the _crypt keeper_ or whomever he’s seeing right now with his eyes as wide as they can go, that they’re Kris and Adam, for fuck’s sake, and that this can be okay.

Yeah.  Kissing him would not be the way to say all that.

“Are you ever going to speak to me again?” he asks instead.  Not accusing.  Just posing the question.

For once, he hasn’t made things worse.  The panicky look slowly eases.  It takes a lot to freak Kris out; Adam doesn’t plan to set that off again.  “I’ve only been avoiding you for a couple of hours,” Kris says, giving him a look.

“I’m still asking.”

Kris folds his arms across his chest.  “My problems are with Katy,” he says, “not with you, okay?  So I’ll work them out, and we’ll be—we’ll be fine.”

Adam doesn’t ask who _we _are.  “You guys have been fighting,” he says, the reality of that suddenly hitting him.  “And I didn’t even notice until—”  But explaining that he’d overheard them while in a hotel broom closet with Drake seems like another thing that he shouldn’t do.

Kris nods, with an exhaustion that seems born of more than just tour fatigue.  Adam should have noticed something before now.  Kris’ throat sounds lined with tension when he says, an eruption of speech that Adam doesn’t think is planned, “She won’t let go!  I don’t even know what to do anymore.  I keep telling her no, and she keeps telling me to at least talk to you about it, and now you actually _heard_—"

"Um,” Adam says.  “I think I overheard a different conversation."

Kris stares at him.  “Oh,” he says, a tiny giggle escaping him as he puts his hands over his face and slides down to the floor.

“Come on,” he says, tugging on Adam’s pant leg.  “Get down here.”

His face is obscured by shadows, but he’s still looking directly at Adam for what feels like the first time in months, and Adam drops down beside him.  They huddle together with their backs against Matt’s bunk.  Kris grips Adam’s hand in both of his until Adam realized that Kris is staring at the freckles and the fine, fair hair that cover the back of it.

“I don’t think of you as blond,” he says with a quick grin, releasing Adam’s hand.

“Well, I don’t think of you with a bowl cut.”

Kris smiles again, but his mind is elsewhere.  “I was just thinking…when you meet people when you’re older, they don’t know the person you might have been…earlier.  They never expect you to be that person.”  He lifts his hand and runs his finger above Adams eye-the paint there, Adam realizes, and he gets it, then.  Adam’s been through quite a few…phases, to get to where he is now.

“Do you ever feel like that?” Kris asks, and Adam wants to say, _Not with you_— which doesn’t make sense, but on the other hand it does, even aside from the fact Kris has saint-like powers of love and acceptance and a way of letting people just _be_.  But Kris says quickly,

“They don’t do it on purpose.  It’s just the person they know, right?  And it’s not like I’m so different, _but_,” he exhales, his head falling forward, almost buried in Adam’s shoulder, “you might know me better than anyone else.”

If he never had to move again, Adam would be perfectly okay with that.  He can feel Kris’ heart, beating steadily right above Adam’s elbow.

“I told Katy that I had a crush on you,” Kris says.  Somehow, the world does not immediately catch fire.  It’s tranquil, more than anything, the movie barely audible from the other room.  “So that’s what we’re working through,” Kris says, low.

That clearly isn’t exactly what Katy wanted Kris to talk to him about, but it’s an acknowledgement that things really are different now, and it eases something in Adam’s chest.  He puts his arm around Kris and says,

“Okay.” 

-

Knowing is unexpectedly better than not knowing.  Like, really unexpectedly.  But there’s a line drawn between them now, labeled “friendship,” and it sort of…works for them.  That they trust each other not to cross the line, but that they know that it’s there.  Adam is pretty sure that there’s kissing on the other side.  He doesn’t regret the line that much.  Just a little.

Drake calls and wants to know when this “later” is when they’re supposed to talk.  Adam takes a deep breath and goes for it, explaining that things got a little weird with Kris, but that they’re fine, now.

“But you do realize that what I said to you still applies.  Even once tour is over, I’m not going to be in any one place for very long.  It’s going to be a while before things settle down.”

Drake considers this.  “So you’re saying that we’re not going to be having the _talk _any time soon.”

“I’m saying...know what you’re getting into.”

“Okay.”  Drake is thoughtful.  “I’m dating Adam motherfucking Lambert.”

Which isn’t exactly how he'd expected that conversation to go.

They’re also even busier than they were, which Adam wouldn’t have thought possible.  Most of the pressure is on choosing a single, and there are a _lot _of opinions on that in the label.  Adam, for one, plays “Strut” for Kris, and the raised eyebrows and open-mouthed smirk are all the answer he needs.  Kris pulling out the side-to-side, chicken-arms dance, on the other hand, is just a bonus.

Adam shakes his head and thrusts his hips at Kris, who retaliates with a little shoulder wriggle that shouldn’t be nearly as cute as it is.  Adam doesn’t know why Kris is such an awkward dancer.  He can get it done _technically_, but he always looks like a fish on the verge of belly flopping, anyway.

“Like this,” he demonstrates, gesturing for Kris to follow along as he lets his shoulders fall back as far as they’ll go.

Kris nearly falls over laughing, but they end up spending twenty minutes working on a move that they do in sync during “Don’t Stop Believing” that night.

It hits Adam, soon enough, that it really is the last leg of the tour.  He starts spending more time on the girls’ bus.  He isn’t really worried about seeing Kris and Allison after tour is over, but everyone else...he hasn’t spent nearly enough time with Megan.  Or Lil, dammit.  He definitely plans to visit Lil at some point and just spend a week watching her mother her babies.

A week.  Yeah.  He’ll pencil her in.

“Once a month,” Kris says.  “It’s bound to happen once a month.”  They have their laptops out and are comparing schedules.

“I’m in Denver,” Adam points out, “and then New Orleans, and you’re in London—”

Kris makes an impatient sound.  “We’ll have lunch _today _and that takes care of September.  Let’s look at October.”

Adam clicks obediently and stares at a calendar already nearly filled.  Kris’ October looks even worse, but they _will _both be in L.A. at the same time for a five day stretch, from the eighth to the twelfth.  So they’ll have lunch.  “This is strange,” Adam says.

Kris purses his lips and points to the eleventh.  It’s a Sunday.  Adam shrugs and sends Kris a meeting invitation; Kris accepts and it’s a date.  Assuming they won’t have to cancel.  “Maybe in November we’ll be in New York at the same time, album promo or something.”  Kris glances sideways at him and suddenly Adam can see it—New York, November, Kris, albums, their whole lives stretching ahead of them with music and families and lunch once a month and phone calls _all the fucking time_.  Except that Kris prefers to text.  There’s probably fan fiction like that, and fuck, his brain has become a scary place.

Kris minimizes the window and sets his laptop aside.  “Megan was looking for you before,” he says.

“Oh.  Yeah.”  Adam laughs.  “We’re video chatting with her tattoo guy.  Are you coming?”

“Matt’s giving me a piano lesson,” Kris says.  They’ve only had time for a few of those, over the course of the tour, and they’re usually pretty amusing.  Matt tends to fade out of teacher mode and just start jamming, and Kris has to speak very sternly to him to get him to focus.

“Later, then,” Adam says.  And that’s another afternoon gone.

Allison has a minor meltdown on the last night of tour.  That’s pretty much the only part of it that Adam remembers, later, aside from one last set, and Kris in his jacket coming up in the lift—the whole thing feeling suddenly unreal all over again, as if they haven’t turned it into mind-deadening routine over the past few months.  Oh, and the silly string.  Hard to forget the silly string.  And the blur of goodbyes.

And then there’s the Ford event, and it’s another little moment with Kris, where it feels like things are finally lifting off, for both of them, and somehow they’re still in this together; it reminds him of the _Idol _finale, where everything was already okay and  all they had to do was sing.

Recording.  Interviews.  Pink concert with Drake, who is so unbelievably patient and also funny as hell about the paparazzi that stalks them everywhere, which is going to come in handy.  Missing tour a little, weirdly, but being too busy to really take that in.

On October seventh, Kris tells him that Katy wants to have him over for dinner, instead of them going out to lunch, because he hasn’t seen their new place yet, and is Adam okay with that?

“This is a bad sign,” Adam tells him.  “Our plan was to do lunch.  We’re messing with it already.”

“We’ll eat early and call it lupper.”  Kris sounds terrific; rested, even.  Buoyant.  “That’s partially lunch.  It’s in the rules.”

“Well.”  Adam considers.  Was lunch supposed to be a couple thing, too?  “Drake is picking up an extra shift tomorrow night; I don’t think he can make it.”

“Oh.  Well, we can…I don’t know.”  Kris is indecisive.  “Katy said I’m not allowed to hog you.”

Adam laughs.  “What time should I show up?”

- 

Dinner starts out fine.

It’s Katy who answers the door.  She’s in flip-flops and a dark red dress, tiny and adorable and exquisite.

“Damn, girl,” Adam greets her, and she grins at him and holds out her arms for a hug.  The Allens are huggy people.

She takes the bottle of Merlot from his hand.  “We already have one of these,” she says with the barest trace of a smile, shutting the door behind him.  Her voice startles him, as always happens when he hasn’t heard it in a while.  It’s just so _young_.

“And now you have two.”

“One for you, and one for me,” she says agreeably—cutely—setting it down on the table.

When Kris comes in from the kitchen, flushed from the heat of the oven and chewing something energetically, it suddenly feels like a lot longer than three weeks since they’ve been in the same room.  Kris is like his own personal gravity; all he has to do is show up, and the whirlwind of the past few weeks slows to normal speed, a kaleidoscope that drops tangible images down to the ground.  _I’m making an album.  I’m dating Drake.  I didn’t even realize how much I missed you._

“Hug first,” Adam orders, “then food, because I’m starving and it smells amazing.  And then I need a tour.”

“Bossy.”  Kris is already close enough to be pulled in tight.  His face nestles into its old spot on Adam’s shoulder.  “Didn’t you have lunch?” he asks as Adam releases him.

“I was holding out for lupper.”

“Good, because we made so _much_,” Katy says with satisfaction, and they sit down to eat.  Kris pulls out his wife’s chair for her, and Adam makes a mental note that there’s a way to do that without seeming like a tool.  He’d like to try it.  The other person probably has to be expecting it, though, or you’d end up knocking them in the shins.

The salmon is fantastic.

“I am such a boring celebrity,” Kris chuckles.  “My first day off in forever, and the paparazzi catch me going to the supermarket.”

Kris isn’t very fond of being recognized, but he seems okay.  “It’s not so bad, though, right?”

“Oh, it’s fine.”  Kris smirks at him.  “I’m nobody here.  Not like _you_.”

“I’ve only gotten stopped once,” Katy says, and there’s the tiniest pause before Kris says,

“Toast _Idol _fans, you guys.”  His own glass holds coke.  “They’re…” he thinks.  “Crazy, and we love them.  They will recognize your wife.”

Adam clinks his glass with Katy’s.

“So how’s work?” he asks her, and she lights up right down to her toes—probably glad that they’re not going to be monopolizing the conversation with music talk—and starts telling him about how considerate her boss is, how easy it is to work from home, how some coworker whose name he loses after less than a minute has been recommending agents to her, some connection through his cousin—

Adam is watching Kris more than listening, to be perfectly honest; every thought that plays across his face and the way his jaw works as he chews.  He keeps glancing at Adam and smiling and he couldn’t be any cuter if he actually had a tail to wag.

“Wait, so your whole office knows about your acting?” Kris asks, and Adam realizes that this is the first time Kris is hearing these stories.  He’s been off making music, too.

“It’s been written up in some interviews about us, anyway, so…”  Katy sips demurely.

"Oh,” Kris says, with one of those big, floppy nods that he does sometimes, and it’s old but familiar, the rush that Adam feels, the not-unpleasant combination of fondness and casual lust.  Kris peeks at him, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, and then his eyes twitch back to Katy, and that’s—

“Are you ready for a tour?” Katy asks Adam.  She’s a little pink from the wine, and she’s looking at him—not at Kris, who stumbles slightly as he gets up from his chair.  Katy holds out her hand.

It’s comfortable and warm, even if Adam is struggling to follow room descriptions like, _This is a kitchen, see the pretty stove._  Kris is trailing about two steps behind and it’s like an itch, feeling him right there.  It’s…maybe it’s too much.  It’s like they’re walking towards something, and maybe he’s had too much to drink; Katy’s voice, the whole thing, is starting to feel as distant as Drake, and the only real thing is Kris, whom he can’t even see.  Adam concentrates.  He makes some comment on the spaciousness of the bathroom, and—

Katy and Kris have a lot of the same mannerisms, which is only natural, considering how long they’ve been together, but it’s still disconcerting to have her eyebrows go up like that, to hear _her_ say, “I know, right?” with Kris’ exact inflection.

Kris ends up at his side and when they brush close with every step Adam feels a pressure building up in the back of his skull.  There must, he thinks, have been something in that wine.

Then Katy opens the door at the end of the hall with a quick, graceful twist of her wrist; Kris and Adam follow her inside before it registers that she’s saying, “So, um, master bedroom, which is what you guys have been thinking about all night anyway, right?” and reality springs up around him again like someone’s switched the color back on.  Or turned on the shower.

Adam freezes in the doorway; Kris is two steps ahead of him and jerks absolutely straight.  Katy is most of the way to the bed, and she turns around, chewing her lower lip just the way Kris does.

“What?” she says, a little out of breath.  “Am I wrong?”

Yes, actually.  And the worst part is that she can’t possibly think that Kris would cheat on her.  That’s not what this is.

Katy swallows.  “We can do this,” she says, looking from one to the other.  “I’m telling you that we can.”

Adam wants Kris to turn, wants to see his face, and he can feel it, like an invisible string between them; but Kris jerks his head towards Katy and says, like Adam isn’t even there,

“You have to stop this.  You haven’t even given me a chance.”

“Kris,” she says softly.

“_This_ is getting to know each other again?” he demands.  “What have we been saying for the past six _months_?  Why would you do this?”

Six months is a lot, Adam thinks.  But they’re right up close to each other, and Katy puts her hand on Kris’ cheek.  “I’m still missing you,” she whispers, so close to his mouth that it looks like they’re kissing.  It’s easy to see how they fit together.  Kris inhales through his nose and steps back.

“I’m trying.”

Katy lets her hand fall.  “How hard should you have to try?”

And there it is.

“I don’t know if you can fix us,” Katy says.  “I really don’t."   Her eyes are tender.  “You have to _want_ to,” she says.

Adam can see Kris from the side, now.  He stares at Katy; his jaw works.  He takes another step backward.

Maybe Adam would do this, if he lost his mind.  Maybe, given the chance, he’d take Kris in any way, shape, or form that he could.  But the real problem is that _Kris _would be using _Katy _to get to _Adam._  
  
He can see how it would go, to a certain extent.  The sex part, at least.  If she can talk Kris into it, Katy will take off her dress and lie on the bed; Kris will kiss down her stomach, maybe a little fierce, a little possessive, because he’ll be desperate to get this right.  Adam will crawl up beside them and look for something to do.  He’ll run his hand over her breast, his thumb over her nipple, and she’ll look at him with lidded eyes, and his own will be asking, _What the hell am I doing?  _But they’ll push on anyway and maybe one of them will enjoy it.  Maybe it will get better with practice.

In Katy’s mind, he supposes, Kris is meant to see it as Adam and Katy both looking to get him off.  And that makes a certain kind of sense.

But if for one second he imagines Kris actually _looking_ at him, the fantasy is gone, obliterated, because he’s a dude with _kissing _fantasies, and if he’s going to go there, if he’s going to finally, finally go there, then _yes_, he wants him and Kris, a house that’s _theirs_, coming home to each other, always the two of them, a lifetime of that.  
_  
Fuck_ Katy.

“This is pathetic,” he says, and Kris and Katy both turn to him.  He keeps his eyes on Katy.  Her hair is loose around her shoulders, her eyes large and round.  She is such a child.  Oh, she’s smart; and loyal, and loving, and savvy.  She works hard, and she can make things happen; Adam knows that’s how Kris thinks of her.  But she thinks she can make _anything _happen.  When it comes down to it, she’s a little girl eating her spinach because then she can get her dessert.

And there is no _fucking _dessert.

“I want to fuck your husband,” he tells her, “and I don’t really give a fuck about you in this context, and he doesn’t either.  How is that any better if you get to watch?”

He can’t help looking at Kris then.

“We’re fine, right?” Adam asks him, and somehow, Kris actually very nearly smiles, because even through this, they’re going to be fine.  Adam is unbearably relieved.  Kris’ eyes run over Katy; she’s looking at her hands.

“I’ll call you,” he says, and if Adam were to kiss him right now, it would be the lightest possible brush of lips, lingering , lingering, and he would pull away and Kris would start to follow after but then pull back, too.

Adam lets himself out.  Next month they’ll stick to doing lunch.

-

It quickly becomes apparent to Adam that he isn't going to be having any healthy relationships for a while.  Which isn’t fair, so fuck Katy with an actual pile driver, okay, because what Adam wants right now is to enjoy someone an incredible amount for being themselves, and just be blown away by them, and have amazing, moderately acrobatic sex.  But, being that he’s now hung up on the same unattainable man all over again, he breaks up with Drake.  It’s the only thing to do, this time.

“You know, Brad gave me this talk, when we first started going out,” Drake says, throwing anything that might possibly belong to him into a box; Adam isn’t stopping him, even if some of that stuff is definitely not Drake’s.  “He was all kinds of weird about it, but he told me that if I didn’t fuck it up, you would be the most—I don’t know, motherfucking tender—”

“You didn’t fuck it up,” Adam tells him, but he doesn’t share his newest bit of wisdom, because Drake would probably find it insulting.  You have to really want to care that much.

It isn’t that Drake expects him to care at this point, or that Drake expects that he’ll start caring immediately once he has the time.  If he’s being completely honest, Drake doesn’t really seem to expect anything at all, and is perfectly willing to be with Adam on whatever terms Adam feels comfortable with, but patience of that magnitude is so fucking demanding it makes Adam want to crawl out of his own skin.

Of course, it would be a completely different story if he actually _wanted _Drake.  Liking him isn’t nearly the same thing.  Love is, in other words, quite the bitch.

He’s self aware enough to understand why he jumps to Kevin from there.  Letting it last for two months is pretty despicable, though.

Kevin is tiny, tinier than Kris, and has sweet blue eyes and a timid smile.  He's a poli-sci major at UCLA who barely even listens to music; he seems to have only the vaguest notion of who Adam is. They meet because Adam has placed the coffee orders and needs a place to sit while he's waiting for his publicist to show up for a meeting; Kevin sees him just standing there and offers his table because he's leaving in a minute anyway.  He seems a little serious and is very involved in the pile of notes in front of him, but he also sneaks a few glances at Adam and grins an embarrassed little grin when he sees that Adam is watching him, too.

Adam flirts with Kevin mostly out of boredom, but the guy is so…earnest, and so completely focused on Adam once they start talking.  It's attention, it's sincerity, and it's irresistible, and he asks for Kevin’s number mainly to watch him eagerly scribble it on a napkin and hand it over.

He ends up calling when he's feeling lonely three days later.  It would be humiliating if it weren't such an ago stroke.  There are at least two dozen other people he could go to first, of course, but not for _this._

“I didn't expect you to call.”  Kevin laughs a little breathlessly.  “I felt like you just took my number on a whim.”  
  
“I did.  And I'm calling you on a whim, and I'm asking you out on a whim.  Are you okay with that?”

“I guess so,” Kevin says.

It’s late, so Adam takes him out for drinks rather than dinner or anything really substantial.  Kevin takes a lot of deep breaths, looking around, and then anchors his eyes on Adam and seems to settle in a little.

“I don’t really drink,” Kevin says.

“Humor me.”

Kevin smiles and ducks his head.  “I’ll just have coffee.”

“_Irish _coffee.”  He smiles to watch Kevin waver, then look at him and firm up.

“Fine,” Kevin says decisively.

Kevin loosens up a little with the whiskey.  He tells Adam that he’s never liked a guy in makeup before; he tells Adam that his confidence is so sexy, and he blushes when he says it.

Adam is too busy to even pretend that this is any kind of relationship, but Kevin is always there when Adam wants to take him somewhere; and Kevin looks up constantly for reassurance, like Adam is the only thing he's not scared of in this big gay world that he has somehow missed out on completely up until now.

It turns out that Kevin is also terrifically photogenic, all bewildered smiles and wide eyes.  Adam is never hounded so much as when he’s out with a guy—any guy—but it’s kind of ridiculous how pictures of them are _everywhere_, to the extent that Adam is aware of it even though he totally does _not _read any of that shit anymore.  And then there’s that one picture that Adam sees out of the corner of his eye, by accident, on the news feed on his homepage—Adam jerks and then turns back because he can’t _not_—it’s Kevin from behind and a little to the side, chin tilted up, smiling in a way that’s meant just for Adam and doesn’t see the fucking cameras.  Adam’s hand twitches on the mouse and then he quickly closes the tab.

Taking Kevin clubbing becomes Adam's favorite new pastime.  Adam starts out just making him dance; Kevin flushes red, but he doesn’t say _no_.  It’s too easy, even easier than getting him drunk, and Adam eventually gives up on both and just takes Kevin to the wildest scenes he can think of and just _watches _him, because Kevin never refuses to be scooped up and taken out, never leaves until Adam says he's ready to leave, and never fucking stops looking at Adam like he's his fucking savior.

And the pictures.  The evidence.  Click on any gossip site and there they are, a dozen at a time, until Adam starts to feel sick at himself and asks, one night when they've only just arrived, if Kevin would like to go.  Relief, surprise, and gratitude are palpable on Kevin's face when he nods, so Adam takes him outside, hails down a cab, and tells Kevin that they probably shouldn't see each other anymore.

Kevin is, surprisingly, not surprised.

“To be honest, I don't know why you were with me in the first place,” is what he says, and then he slams the cab door in Adam's face.

Adam goes back inside and gets drunk, but not so drunk that he'll do something stupid like drunk-dial Kris.

He and Kris do have lunch on November nineteenth.  And they are in New York.  They’re bundled up; the snow is a blank white slate, and they walk afterwards with Styrofoam coffee cups in their hands.

Kris says, “I keep writing all these complicated melodies with like, every chord dissonant and just...all this weird crap.  The label is never going to go for it.  Not even for the next album.  And I know, I mean...I _want_ to write normal, pretty things.”

Adam processes that.  “Well, that shit needs to be analyzed.”

“I don't know,” Kris says.  “I think it's pretty cliché.”

Adam half laughs.  “Do you feel like more of an artist now that you're tortured?”

Kris takes a moment to answer, and then says abruptly, “You know what?  Sorry,”   and changes the subject to something Charles said the other day.

“Hey,” Adam interrupts him.  “Not cool.  Talk to me.  And don't apologize for doing it.”

But Kris just laughs him off, pretty unconvincingly.  Which is a shame, because worrying about Kris is something that he can do without feeling like an asshole.

He meets Samuel the same night he breaks up with Kevin.  Although, allegedly, he already knows him.  He does remember him vaguely; a theater groupie, or a cabaret fan, maybe?  He never quite clears that up.

Samuel looks like that young, cool chemistry teacher who turns out to be a rapist.  Dark blond hair pulled back in the shortest ponytail known to man, pretty eyes that blink owlishly behind wire-rimmed glasses, a slightly goofy smile.  He buys Adam drinks and flirts aggressively, and even though Adam wasn't really planning on it he doesn't particularly mind when Samuel blows him in the handicap stall.

“Do you want this to be a one-time thing?” Samuel asks afterwards.  “Because I know you're out of my league, but I'm totally willing to be a booty call.”

Adam decides to trust his instincts that this guy is not out for a TMZ exclusive, and at least he's right on that much.

At first he thinks that Samuel just likes sex.  He seems to take a great deal of pleasure in finding the dirty in even the most inane activities.  Which is fun, so Adam goes along with it for the first two days.

But when Adam's not in the mood to have his neck licked while he's on the phone with his manager, Samuel's mask slips for less than a second.  He gets it back up pretty quickly, but Adam thinks, _oh_.

And when a phone call with Kris just doesn't satisfy the next day, Adam becomes a bit of a tease.  Nothing too mean, just being a _little _slow, opening Samuel up just a _bit _at a time.

“Adam, come _on_,” Samuel breathes, pressing down and trying to fuck himself on Adam's fingers, and Adam pulls out immediately with a gentle warning.

“Stay still.  I'm not going to tell you that twice.”

He doesn't have to.  Samuel listens very carefully to everything Adam tells him to do after that, and it's kind of fun.

Within a week he's taking Samuel out to dinner just so he can finger him in the bathroom and then refuse to let him come until after they eat.  He rubs his foot into Samuel’s crotch under the table.

“You’re eating too quickly,” he says solicitously when Samuel chokes.  “Don’t do that; you’ll get sick.”

When Adam toys with his zipper later in bed, Samuel begs, and it's not that no one's ever said _please_ to him before, but no one's ever seemed to mean it so much.

Within two weeks there's an incident involving a dog collar and leash, which is not actually a kink of Adam's.  Samuel is on all fours and _barking_, and Adam doesn't even know how he got here when he hears himself say,

“Do you even like this, or are you taking my cock any way you can get it?”

“Just fuck me,” Samuel spits.

Adam ends things after that, and wonders whether he should seek therapy.  He definitely shouldn’t be allowed near google for a while.  He finally cracks and lines up all the pictures of him with Kevin alongside that fan’s collection of pictures from forever ago, and looks at them for a bit; then he closes everything and clears his browser history.

He and Kris don’t get to see each other in December.  Things are calming down for Kris, but Adam is starting up his makeup line, and he’s very involved in the wardrobe for his tour.  He’s also offered a TV spot on _Glee_, so that’s a case of rumor coming full circle.

“And it’s like, I don’t even mind that it took forever to get here, you know?” he says, because when he’s talking to Kris he remembers that his life is insanely good most of the time, and that the thing with Samuel was very short and really just temporary insanity.  “I wasn’t prepared for all this five years ago.”

Kris laughs.  “It was always going to happen for you,” he says, and Adam pictures time not stretched out straight in front of him but like a tangled ball of wire, events wending past each other in every direction.

“I was never going to be an accountant or anything,” Adam says reasonably.  “I just would have been designing these costumes for someone else.”

“Costumes?” Kris repeats.  Then, “Don’t tell me, I want to be surprised.”

They’re going to be on tour at the same time.  They should check their schedules now and meet up twice in January.  Maybe three times, one extra as a penalty for missing December.

“If I find out _you’re_ wearing plaid and jeans,” he says, “I’m firing your wardrobe people.”

Kris is quiet for a moment, and Adam opens his mouth to tell him about the stage show, because the people working on _that _are fucking genius.  Kris says, “Katy and I are separated,” and Adam doesn’t even know what the fuck that means.

His thoughts are so many simultaneous, irrelevant non-sequiturs: _Coming out what does he want separation isn’t divorce the press loves me holy shit._

“We’re seeing a marriage counselor.  She might come on tour with me for a little,” Kris says.  “We’re talking about it.”

Adam hates himself.  “So you’re doing okay.”

“Yeah,” Kris says. 

- 

Adam meets Wes at some industry event on January ninth.  Wes is there with a press pass, and Adam doesn't mind being cornered after the mingling gets a little old, especially by a reporter who hardly seems interested in interviewing him anyway.

Wes isn't even close to being Adam's type.  He's a few inches taller and hard-bodied, with liquid black eyes, close-cropped black hair, and an ever-present cigarette nestled in his palm.  He's a part-time music critic for an online indie music mag; he's also an ex-fire fighter who carelessly tosses cigarette butts and emits a steady stream of smoke.  He doesn't seem to understand why Adam finds this ironic, but he may just be... acting ironically about that.

They happen to be at the bar at the same time, so Adam concludes later that it isn't a case of being cornered so much as a combination of coincidence, and Wes being so fucking bored.  At the time, though, it seems less like boredom and more like intent.

“A vodka martini,” Wes observes.  He leans against the bar and looks Adam up and down. “What can I learn about you from the fact that your drink is a vodka martini?”

He's big enough that he looks even bigger leaning.  There's a casual grace in the way he holds his drink, tilts his head, scans the room, lets his eyes trace up Adam's legs and linger on his mouth for a moment.  His eyes are rich, inky black, lazily sensuous.

“I'm secretly James Bond,” Adam says.

“That would be an interesting take.”

Adam notices the press pass, then.  Wes sees him looking at it and shrugs.

“I completely trashed your album, if you must know.”

“How nice for you,” Adam says pleasantly.

Wes smiles musingly, contemplatively.  “I probably got people more interested than if I'd told the truth.”

“Which is?"

“That it's decent.”  He takes a slow drag.  “Adequate.”

“What were you doing,” Adam wants to know, “reviewing an _Idol_ album, anyway?”

“We review everything.  What you'll hear on the radio and what you won't.”

“In order to properly mock it?”

“Does that hurt your artistic soul?”  Wes studies Adam.  “That's unexpected.”

“I was actually analyzing _your _motivations.”

“Oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you.”  Wes releases a thin stream of smoke upwards from his mouth.  “How would you feel about letting us do another feature on you sometime soon?”

“Letting you?”  Adam tastes the words.  “Did you get my permission for the first one?”

“Well.  This one with your cooperation.”

Adam laughs out loud.  “Who are you?  And how often does this approach net you interviews?”

“Sometimes it gets me dates instead.”  He throws that out there, but he isn't really asking Adam out, at that point.  He locks his eyes on Adam's and it's his next question that feels like the start of something.

“Come on.  Do you really need people to like you?”

Adam stares back at him.

“No,” Adam says, and breathes the sweet smoke of Wes' cigarette deep into his lungs. 

- 

Mostly they just jack each other off.  Wes is decent at blowjobs and could probably take over the world with his fingers, and he has absolutely no interest in kissing.  Dating him is the easiest thing Adam has ever done.

They're a good fit professionally, which Adam appreciates because he's had trouble giving a shit about work, lately.  Between the two of them, they have some sort of in at pretty much every music event in the city, and even when Adam is tired it takes no effort to go and hang out with Wes at the bar.  His publicist is pleased.  Adam had started to blow off events before he met Wes, and now he's more visible than ever.

It's also not bad for his image.  Wes is surprisingly clean-cut.  Yes, he makes drinking into an art form and smokes like it's his job, but other mind-or-mood-altering substances hold zero interest for him.  And he never loses control.

It’s easiest not to comment when the press refers to them as a couple.  Adam wonders, once, what Wes tells his colleagues about the two of them, but it’s really pretty basic.  They exchange keys because it’s easier, but it doesn’t really matter who Wes fucks and what he does other than talk shit with Adam at parties or at dinner.  That’s another perk; eating at places recommended by Wes’ food critic friends.

Adam isn’t sure how the subject of fan fiction comes up in dinner conversation, though.

“Personalized porn,” Wes muses.  “I would never be able to tear myself away.”

“You can read and jerk off at the same time?” Adam knows that his mouth is tight.  He knows that Wes knows it, too.

Wes lights another cigarette, and for one second smoke envelopes Adam like warm, stale breath.  “I’ve never tried.  Let’s find out.”

Adam sits on the bed, not saying a word, while Wes browses.  He’s drinking scotch, but he isn’t remotely drunk.  Wes glances over at him a few times, one side of his mouth turned up like he’s smiling, but gets up after only a few minutes.

“I don’t do role playing,” he says, “and none of them feature me.”

“No,” Adam says.

“That bus blowjob that your boyfriend liked, though.” Wes unties his shoes and it seems like the filthiest thing that fingers can do.  “That sounds like it might be fun.”

Adam puts the glass down and gets on his knees.

-

Wes’ magazine is a big deal in certain circles, or so Alisan and Cassidy inform him when Wes decides to review them both.  Adam tries to explain that Wes will, from time to time, write reviews designed purely to fuck with people, but he can’t really clarify that that seems like the most likely reason for his interest, anyway.  And apparently, just getting their names out there is better than not.  He realizes later that they also think that _he _could prevent Wes from saying anything truly terrible, if it came to that.

When the feature comes out, Wes is fairly positive towards Cas, with some reservations, but as far as Alisan goes— 

“Where the fuck do these comparisons even come from?  Avril’s _edge_?  What the actual fucking _fuck—_"    There's mad, and then there's Alisan.  She prints out the review so that she can set fire to it.  On Adam's kitchen floor.

Apparently, Wes described her as Avril-esque punk pop minus Avril's edge or anything resembling a memorable hook.

“I can talk to him,” Adam tells her, “but I don't know if it would make things better or worse.  He does what he wants.”

Her eyes grow frighteningly large, but she doesn’t slap him; she spins around and walks out without another word.  Adam is still leaning against the counter, contemplating the ashes, when Wes walks in.  Wes studies the mess on the floor and cocks a quizzical eyebrow.

“Leave it,” Adam says.  Wes is already snapping open Adam’s belt, and Adam closes his eyes and goes with it.  The sharp edge of the counter scores Adam’s hips with every thrust and as he comes he remembers that he’s supposed to meet Kris for lunch in two days.

That’s the only time that he lets Wes fuck him.

 

- 

“Our marriage counselor says that we’re together out of guilt,” Kris says.  He sounds calm, but he stabs savagely at his spaghetti.

Adam isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say.  “Why?”

“I don’t know.”  He finally gets some noodles on his fork and he gestures with it, broadly.  “I’m pretty sure I didn’t marry her out of guilt, right?  There was a reason to do it in the first place?”

Adam feels a headache coming on.  Kris' lower lip is jutting out, and if Adam kissed him now, if he ran his tongue along the inner rim of that pout, it would be desperate and pathetic and it would mean, _Stay with me._  
  
“Kris?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember when you didn’t tell me that you and Katy were fighting during the tour because you thought that it would be weird for us?”  Kris is frozen with his fork halfway to his mouth.

“This is weird for me,” Adam says.

“Oh, I—yeah.”  Kris drops his fork and stares down at his plate.  “Okay.”

They forget to choose a date for February before they leave.

-

Adam hadn’t planned on attending Allison’s tour launch party.  He doesn’t know why not; it’s Allison, and it’s a party.  That’s reason enough to show up.  It’s not like it’s some Disney crowd, either, although to be quite honest, Adam has no idea what sorts of people attend Disney-pop launch parties.   Maybe those are the best parties and he’ll never know because he’ll never bother to check them out.

Wes gives him a withering look when he offers this insight.  Adam shrugs and gets them another round of martinis.  He still hasn’t seen Allison herself, and he’s here at her particular request.

“You have to come!” she’d insisted.  “I haven’t seen you for-fucking-_ever_, man!”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”  Although, his instinctive reaction _was_ to turn her down; but he knew that Wes would probably want to go, and Adam felt something uncurl a little, inside him, at the sound of her voice.

“None of these _maybes_,” she told him severely. “You’re coming.  And we’re hanging out.  And we should do that lunch thing that you do with Kris.  Not at the party, I mean, like, in general.”

“Kris told you about that?” he asked, because he’s pretty sure that _he _didn’t.

“Yeah.  Oh, hey, maybe you can get him to agree to a movie night!”  She’d been pleased with this idea.  “He always says he’s busy but I bet you could talk him into it.”

“Into not being busy?” Adam asked dryly.

“I don’t know, man, I’m busy, too.  I’m throwing the party, aren’t I?  I still have time to fail at learning guitar.”

Adam hoped she didn’t hear how his breath caught.  “Your _people _are throwing the party.  Kris is teaching you guitar?”

“Trying.”  Another thought struck her.  “You have a boyfriend, right?  Will he come with you?  Can I meet him?”

The mental image of Allison meeting Wes jarred him.  She went on, not waiting for an answer.  "I’m just pissed that Kris has to be out of town.  But at least I see him!  I never see you!  So you’re coming, right?”

So here he is.  He wants to see her.  He wants to see the latest incarnation of red in her hair, and he wants to make sure that she doesn’t drink too much because even if it’s a celebration, the girl is a lightweight.  And she knows how to get around her handlers.

He slams Wes backward into the bar when she catapults onto him out of nowhere, and maybe that’s why he isn’t prepared for the wave of pure _feeling _that surges when she grins up at him, squashed against his chest.  Flashbulbs…flash.  He pushes her off so he can get a better look; her grin is so fucking wide, and her hair is huge, a wild, carmine red tumble with streaks of violet.

“Tour, baby!” she says, punching him in the arm; then her smile turns saccharine and she looks up at him with wide, hopeful eyes.

“I hope you preordered tickets.  You can get them at my website, AllisonIrahata-dot-com, or even through online ticket vendors.  Tour kicks off in—”

“What a well-trained puppy,” Adam says, patting her head.  On tour he’d wanted to just keep her with him, have her there to pull out of his pocket at will.  It still doesn’t seem like an unreasonable demand.

“Ugh, I’ve been saying those lines for _days, _man.”  She shudders theatrically.  “You _will_ come to a show, though, right?”

“For the price of a shout-out.”  He really might.  “We have to exchange schedules.”

“Well, fuck it, I’m coming to yours for sure.”

Her certainty is impressive, as are her heels.  She’s giving him one of those looks, though; the kind that he spends half his time pretending not to see, these days.  She’d probably expected a little more exuberance, but this is the best he can do.

“I’m Wes,” Wes says, and Adam starts.

“Right.  Alli, this is—Wes.”

Allison gives him a friendly smile.  She clearly has no idea that this is the boyfriend she was so eager to meet.  Not that Wes is his boyfriend.  And not that Adam really wants her to meet him, _or_ look him up and down with what she may or may not think is subtlety.  Adam looks at Wes’ impassive face and suddenly feels—something, and puts his arm around Allison’s shoulders.

“No interviews right now, we’re catching up.”

“I have three questions,” Wes says, flipping open his notebook.  “I can ask them now and then not tell anyone when you go off to do jello shots together.  Or they can wait.”

“There are jello shots?” Allison says.  She rolls her eyes at Adam’s grimace and tells Wes, “Ask me anyway.”  She probably thinks that it’s okay to talk to some random reporter, if he’s a friend of Adam’s.

Wes contemplates her for a moment.  “You’re obviously close with Adam, here.  You must know the tabloids have been commenting on how thin he looks lately.  Do _you_ ever feel the need to lose weight, conform to certain body image expectations that may not necessarily be natural or easy for you to maintain?"

The sudden, incredibly strong impulse to punch him in the face floods Adam.  It feels amazingly good and he stares at Wes and wonders why the hell he hasn’t already done it at some point.  In a less public setting, though.  Bad idea to do it here.

“I’m in it for the music,” Allison is saying, and while she looks a little uncomfortable, she clearly means it; Adam is caught in a confused combination of warmth and _where the fuck is her_ _handler_?

“So you haven’t ever considered extreme measures,” Wes says smoothly, looking down at her like this is just between them, “for keeping fit?”

“Aaaand, interview’s over!”  Adam says.  He drops his arm from Allison and says, “Be right back,” before dragging Wes three feet away.  He says, lightly, “Do you really think that you can pull that kind of crap with me standing _right _there?”

Wes’ answer is a bare curve of his lips.

Adam says, “Obviously you're going to do what you want, and I know how much you would enjoy fucking with me simply _because_ I'm asking you not to, or because I'm threatening you, but here it goes anyway: do not fuck with me.”

Wes tilts his head thoughtfully and slips his notebook back into his pocket.  “It feels like you just broke up with me.”

He hadn’t meant to, but suddenly that doesn’t seem like a terrible idea.  “It does, doesn't it?”

Wes nods slowly and stubs his cigarette out on the side of his glass.  “Will you still let me interview you?  We never got around to that.”

“Call my manager,” Adam says, and holds his hand out for the spare key.

He spends the rest of the night sitting at the bar without a drink, watching Allison enjoy herself.  He tries to remember the last time he sang that wasn’t tour rehearsal; he should do that.  He’d like that.  Maybe he and Alli will go out to karaoke instead of lunch.

When he gets home he takes about six showers and then calls Alisan to apologize for his dick of a not-boyfriend.  He sits outside on his deck and turns his face towards a breeze and thinks, _That’s another thing that I like_.  He should make a list.  He should call his mom, too. 

- 

He finds out that Kris is divorced two days later, from one of the celeb mags at the checkout counter in the supermarket.

He probably deserves that.

There are a number of direct quotes from Kris, too, which seems weird; Adam can’t imagine Kris discussing the dissolution of his marriage with a random-ass gossip shark.  Actually, he can imagine Kris doing exactly that; it’s happened before, hasn’t it? Sometimes, the man does not think.  Adam skims through and finds all the quotes and tries to piece them together and imagine how they’d actually come out of Kris’ mouth.  This time, it’s a lecture on divorce rather than relationships: “_What _ended it?  Don’t ask me _that_.  It wasn’t any one thing.  There isn’t any one thing that she could ever do that would be a reason.  We’ll always be friends, I think…yeah, stress makes some relationships stronger, and it showed us where ours was weaker.  That’s what happened.”

He really is the most boring celebrity ever.  It’s…inspiring.  Adam pays for his fruit and buys the mag, too.  The cashier winks at him.

He’s gotten obsessed with smoothies in the few days since the party.  They’re healthy and delicious and he’s starved for normal kinds of pampering.  He’s trying to figure the best way to peel a mango when Neil calls and tells him that he just went out for pizza with Kris.

“He’s in New York?” Adam says.

“Excellent deduction.  Except no.  He _was _in New York.  Oh, and I finally got to ask him how straight he is.”

Adam drops the fruit and knife with a clatter onto the counter.  “_Fuck_, Neil—”

“It’s just not the kind of question you can ask over the phone, you know?”

Adam seethes silently.

“He’s a good guy,” Neil says.  “He’s getting into L.A. tomorrow, and you’d better be nice to him.  I don’t care which one of you is actually my brother, I don’t want to have to kick your ass.”

“You—”

“Me,” Neil confirms.  “I’ve been working out.  Kris showed me how to do arm reps." 

“Tomorrow?” Adam asks.

“Tomorrow,” Neil agrees. 

- 

  
It’s obviously completely earned.  The universe put them in an impossible situation at the start of this whole saga; it’s only right that the timing work out so exactly when things start to break in the other direction.  In other words, Adam is really, really glad that he went to Allison’s party.  
  
  
  
  
Not that things are necessarily breaking.  He trusts Neil, but Kris has been divorced for less than a week.  
  
  
  
  
Adam decides to put that on the table immediately when Kris shows up on his doorstep.  Kris had called first, of course.  ”We don’t have a date for February,” he’d said.  “Are you busy today?”  
  
  
  
  
“What do you think?” Adam asked.  
  
  
  
  
Now Adam holds up the magazine and says, “Oh, look, Marjorie Knopfsen knew before I did.”  


They’re on opposite sides of the room.  Kris has his hands stuffed uncertainly in his pockets from the start; he isn’t sure whether Adam is really upset over this, which is perfectly legitimate, since Adam isn’t sure, either.  
  
  
“Oh, hey, wait.”  Kris makes an adorably bemused face, scrunching his nose.  “You won’t believe this.  Do you remember when Jill got that reporter to back off of the fight she heard?  With me and Katy on the phone?”  
  
“That’s Marjorie Knopfsen.  What really happened was, Jill told her that the call was just tabloid trash type stuff, and that even me going off on her wouldn’t really sell well, because I was—”  
  
  
  
  
“Pro-family values?” Adam suggests.  
  
  
  
  
“Totally.”  Kris grins at him.  “So—I don’t even know how she got a professional to _buy _this—but Jill told Marjorie that she gave my marriage less than a year.  And she promised her a mini exclusive.  When it fell apart for real.”  


Adam stares at him.  “Jill is still working for you?”  
  
  
Kris raises one eyebrow.  “She got it right, didn’t she?”  
  
  
  
  
There is that.  
  
“Is it really selfish that I want you to be able to talk to me?” Adam asks.  “It probably is.  But I want you to be able to talk to me.”  
  
  
  
  
“I wanted to,” Kris says, miserable, “but I was kind of confused and you—”  


“Would you shut up and let me be pissed for one minute?”  Kris’ mouth snaps shut.  “Don’t let me get away with stuff like I pulled last time.  I’m not allowed to shut you out.  It makes me into a jerk.”  
  
  
Kris looks up when Adam doesn't continue.  Adam laughs.  “Are you still letting me be pissed?  Because that was it.”  Kris' face changes in front of him as he says, “That was—that was all I wanted to yell at you about.  How much I miss you, you—”  


Kris defies the laws of physics with how quickly he's across the room.  Technically it's a hug, but—he's climbing up Adam's knees, pulling himself up with the back of Adam's neck, pressing close and fitting right back in.  Kris mumbles against his chest, “So, I should have told you this earlier, but I'm divorced.”  Adam can feel his lips moving through the fabric of his shirt.  
  
  
Kris is in his arms.  Adam doesn't quite know what to do with that.  Everything that comes to mind doesn't seem to suit this conversation very well.  


“How do you feel?” he asks, because that's the most important thing, and Kris tilts his head back as far as he can, so that he's looking up directly into Adam's face without having to move away.

“I felt like crap,” he says evenly.  “Like a stupid, worthless failure.  And guilty.  And frustrated.”  
  
He's falling back onto his heels.  His hands are moving, down Adam's neck to his shoulders, down Adam's arms, to his waist.  He's staring at his own hands gripping Adam's hips."I kept trying to figure out,” he says in a low voice, “what the moral of the story would be, if it ended the way I wanted it to end.”

“Moral?” Adam repeats, hooking his thumbs into Kris’ belt loops, sliding his palms lower.

“You know.  Something about doing the right thing and marriage.  But the only moral I could come up with is that doing the right thing involves a lot of crap.”  
  
He's smiling when he looks up, that sweet, crooked grin, and Adam kisses him fast.  Kris' lips are like a sigh; like a breath being let out at last.  Adam dips his head down and kisses along Kris’ jaw, and then his mouth again, hard, and now Kris' lips are red and wet and a lot like sex.  
  
Adam feels that a little honesty is in order.  “_You_ were doing the right thing,” he says.  He slides his tongue below Kris' collarbone; Kris lets out a surprised breath.  “I was…not.”  
  
Kris lets his head fall back, and all that gorgeous, open skin—Adam trails his mouth from Kris' ear down to the hollow of his throat.  “I’m sorry,” Kris murmurs, and how he would know that Adam didn’t _like _having his way with impressionable or emotionally warped boys is truly a mystery.  
  
“That is not a normal reaction.”  Adam lifts his head so that he can see Kris’ face.  These are things that they should probably actually talk about.  
  
Kris is still the picture of virtue, looking back at him, even with the beginnings of some serious sex hair.  “It’s not like I expected you to sit around waiting for my marriage to fall apart,” he says, all drawly and deep and just a shade out of breath.  
  
“Especially since you were actually trying to make it work.”

“Right.”  Kris slides his hands up under Adam's shirt, and settles them – there – over where Adam's heart is starting to pound.  “I've written some happy love songs, you know.”  Kris' fingertips tease over Adam's nipples.  “Over the last month or so.  Maybe the moral is—”  
  
Adam yanks him close by the collar of his shirt and presses their foreheads together.  “Maybe it's 'stop looking for a moral.'”  
  
Kris reaches up and kisses him then; Adam pulls back and they just look at each other.  Adam leans close and hovers there, letting them breathe together.  It’s agonizingly slow, just a little bit at a time, but then they’re there, and he’s kissing Kris so deeply that when they finally break apart they almost fall over.  


They’re on the floor, actually—on their knees on the floor, falling forward and sideways onto their hands.  Kris looks over at him and laughs, and Adam laughs too, because this is it, this is finally it, and he kisses Kris again for no other reason except just because he can. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Stung (You've Got a Hold on Me)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/88751) by [minglingcrab](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minglingcrab/pseuds/minglingcrab)




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